Cancel All Our Vows (24 page)

Ellis flushed. “I see what you mean. I’ll get in there tonight and go over to their offices first thing in the morning. I won’t rush it.”

“If you get back Thursday, that’s soon enough. Friday is the Fourth of July.”

They shook hands and Fletcher wished him luck. Ellis turned with his hand on the doorknob. “By the way, will this be all right with you? My car needs a lot of work, so I think I’ll put it in the garage. I’d like to tell Laura that if she needs anything, she can call you. Okay?”

“Certainly.”

“That was quite a party yesterday.”

“Wasn’t it.”

“Glad you asked us, Fletch. Laura will probably give Jane a ring sometime today.”

He sat at his desk after Ellis had gone. Miss Trevin told him Jane was on the line. “Hello?”

“Fletch? I tried to get you before when you were in the meeting.” Her voice was crisp and formal. “It’s about the children.”

“What about them?”

“I don’t think it would hurt if they were away for a few days. Say until the Fourth. We promised them we’d take them to the fireworks at the club Friday night, you know. I could take them.”

“I’ll be glad to. It would be good for them to … get out of the heat for a few days, I guess. But the camp doesn’t start until …”

“I realize that. The Trumbulls asked me over a week ago if Judge and Dink could visit them at their camp at Lake Harrison. Their boy and girl are almost exactly the same age you know, and Madge said they had no one to play with up there, and she has help this year, and she’d be glad to have them. I said no at the time because of them going away to camp so soon. She said if I changed my mind, to bring them up any time.”

“I guess that would be okay. What do the kids think?”

“They liked the idea, I guess. They seem … a little odd today. It’s hard to tell what they’re thinking.”

“It’s fine with me. I think it’s a good idea, in fact.”

“We can leave here right after lunch. I have my keys. I thought we could taxi down and take the car, if that’s all right with you.”

“Fine.”

“It’s not a good road and traffic is usually heavy and it’s
a hundred miles, so I thought if she asks me, I’ll stay over tonight.”

“Do as you please.”

“If I’m not home by nine, then I’m staying over. I’ve told Anise not to come this week.”

“I don’t plan to get home before then anyway.”

“Oh, I see.”

He held the line for a few seconds and said, “Well, is that all?”

He heard the soft click as she hung up. He shut his hands so hard his knuckles hurt. He wanted to smash things, overturn the desk, kick out the window. Instead he waited until his breathing was normal, and then, tried to lose himself in his work. It was a formula that seldom failed. On this day the effort was useless. Evil figures crawled through his brain. He kept thinking of the good days, and he wanted to cry like a child. He remembered the days when Dink was one and Judge was three, and they were nearly driving Jane mad. And he had had to leave her for the crazy months overseas. Her letters had always been a declaration of love and faith, strengthening him, and making him feel soiled and guilty in the arms of Beatrice and the abundant Hannah. He thought of all the nights of love with Jane, of how it always varied. Sometimes warm and slow and sleepy, and sometimes wildly inventive, and sometimes pure magic that took you away from yourself, away from a known world. Had any man ever lost more, and lost it more brutally? He wished with all his heart that she had denied the incident flatly and calmly and decisively, and that he could have learned to live with the lie—rather than having it this way, where there seemed to be nothing left.

Chapter Fourteen

At ten o’clock on Monday evening the city stewed like a pot over a slow fire. The overworked police began to have the feeling that some vast lid was about to blow off. There was a thread of fear in them, and even the milder members of the force used quick brutality as the solution to most problems.

An interne carefully counted twenty-three stab wounds in a stocky Italian body and marveled that the man had lived long enough to die as they were wheeling him into the emergency operating room. Somebody found a starving dog under the Town Street bridge. A person unknown had carefully sewed its festering mouth shut with heavy cord. Three young girls of decent family were picked up naked in a sedan parked on a downtown street. It was discovered that all three were full of heroin, and that two of the three were diseased. A pulpy bloated body was fished out of the river by four small boys. An elderly man was nabbed in the park for indecent exposure and on the way to headquarters he managed to dive out of the open window of the prowl car to die under the wheels of a city bus. A hysterical girl was found wandering on the highway near lover’s lane. They found the body of her escort ten feet from the parked car. The four men who had raped her had hit the young man a bit too hard.

The night heat was like the string of a bass fiddle, a string which had been plucked and now vibrated in a tone just below the ability of the human ear to hear it. A man sat in a small dirty apartment near the river. There was a boy scout hatchet near his feet. Those who had heard the screams called the police. They broke the door down and the youngest cop was sick in the hall. The man sat there,
studying first his palms, and then the backs of his hands, over and over, as though there were something there he would understand if he looked long enough and thought hard enough. A small boy toddled into a doorway, fingers in his mouth, and stared mildly at his teen-age sitter and her boy friend on the dark couch. The boy friend cursed. The sitter snatched up the boy so violently that he howled with fright and pain. She thrust him back in his crib. If he kept crying, the boy would go. If she didn’t come back soon, the boy would go. She held the pillow down tightly with both hands for a long time and then went back to the living room, heard herself say faintly, “He went to sleep,” as she slipped back into the boy’s rough impatient arms.

The police cursed the night and the heat and the animal city as they built up long weary hours in future courtrooms. The city lay on a hundred thousand sticky beds and fought for air.

At ten o’clock Fletcher had known for some time that he was going to phone. He had known in the meeting that he was going to phone, as soon as it had been decided that Ellis would be sent to K.C.I. She had been in his mind ever since. Yet, somehow, he had fought against it, fought to the very limit of his strength.

He had wandered through the areas of the cheapest bars, collar open, sleeves rolled up, coat over his arm. He’d lost his hat someplace, and he couldn’t remember where, or how. He’d sat in one dim bar and a tawny, hard-mouthed girl had sung one of the old songs and it had made him cry, silently there, in the dimness, with the glass cold against his hand. That was many bars ago, and he was beyond tears.

He saw the booths in the back of the drugstore and he went in. Ceiling fans stirred the air, and there was an indefinable smell of garbage. He had two dimes, and first he called his home and counted the rings for a time, and then forgot to count and finally hung up. He stood heavily in the booth, and then remembered he had to look up the number. He got the number and started to dial and forgot it, and had to go back to the book and look again.

She answered on the third ring. “Hello?” She sounded far away.

“This is Fletch.”

“Oh! What do you want, Fletcher?”

“That’s a good question. A very good question.”

“You’re drunk.”

“Oh, a little. Not
too
drunk, if you know what I mean, honey.”

“I’m afraid I do. You better go take a cold shower, Fletcher.”

“Let’s both take one. Little co-operative shower. Very brisk.”

“This is a party line, you know.”

“Good thing. Wake them up. Give ’em something to talk about. Ellis go bounding off okay?”

“Yes. He took a three o’clock flight. I drove him out.”

“Kiss him good-by?”

“I believe so.” She sounded irritated.

“Jane’s away. Up at a lake. She likes lakes. Got to tell you about that sometime. She’s nuts about lakes.”

“I was reading, Fletcher, and enjoying it. Do you have anything at all to say?”

“Last night. Didn’t I turn down a deal?”

“I got that impression.”

“Changed my mind, baby. Quick-like. Right after you left.”

“Think it over some more and call me in the morning.”

“I tell you I’m fine! Sober as a damn judge.”

“Frankly you sound sloppy and messy and I don’t want you barging around here tonight. Is that clear?”

“Ellis said you’d phone me up, you want anything. No car, he said.”

“The garage was too busy. They couldn’t take the car. Good night, Fletcher.”

“Wait a minute!”

“Go to bed, Fletcher. Good night.”

There was a sharp, decisive click. He fished in his pocket and found another dime. Then he went out and asked the address of the drugstore. He went back into the booth and phoned a cab. When it came he was waiting out on the corner, feeling faintly queasy. He gave Laura’s address. On the dark street the houses looked all alike, back in the elm shadows.

He paid off the cab and stood in the shadows for a time, and then walked up to the porch steps with an attempt at briskness and decision. But he stumbled on the steps and caught himself with his hands, hurting his wrist.

He pounded on the door, calling, “Laura! Laura!”

He looked through the glass. The hall light clicked on and he saw her stride quickly down the hall toward the door. She wore a dark blue robe and her face was set and angry. She fiddled with the door and then opened it. It opened about five inches before the night chain snubbed it.

“Really!” she said. “I
do
have to live here.”

“Take that silly chain off, or I’ll huff and I’ll puff and I’ll blow your house down.”

“Listen to me! Can you understand what I’m saying?”

“Sure. Anybody’d think I was drunk, the way you talk.”

“I don’t want you in this house … in your present condition or any other condition. This house is out of bounds. Can you understand that?”

“Come on. Get the car keys and we’ll go to my house.”

“I’ll phone a cab. It will be here in five minutes and take you home.”

“Just got rid of a cab. Sick of cabs. Gets monotonous. Be a good kid and let me in.”

“No!”

“LAURA, LET ME IN!”

“
Will
you shut up! Please!”

“LAURA!”

She fumbled with the chain and swung the door open. He walked through, reaching for her. She twisted out of his arms and turned off the hall light. He reached for her again and she hit him sharply across the mouth. The shock silenced him.

She said, “Get back away from the door. I think somebody called the police.”

The pale car drifted down the street. It stopped in front. A uniformed man got out and came up the walk. She pushed at Fletcher. “Get in the other room. Sit down on the floor before you knock something over.”

He went into the other room, found a chair and sank gratefully into it. He heard a heavy voice, heard her calm
answering tone. “It didn’t come from here, officer. Further up the street I think. I heard it too. A man shouting.”

The door closed and he could vaguely see her as she came toward him. She stopped a careful distance away. “Really!” she whispered.

“Sorry,” he mumbled. “Drunker than I thought I guess. Hell of a note.”

“I don’t want you here.”

“See what you mean.”

“I’ve got to get you home somehow. Is your wife really out of town?”

“Yes. I wasn’t kidding. Look … maybe some black coffee and then call a cab …”

She stood in silent thought. “All right. Don’t come out into the kitchen until I get the shades down.”

He sat until he saw the bright kitchen lights go on. He stood up and felt his way toward the kitchen. He lurched alarmingly and hit something. It went over with a loud crash. She came running. “Oh, God! The lamp.”

She helped him, got him safely into the kitchen and in a chair at the kitchen table. She said, “I make lousy coffee.”

“Just hot and black. All I need.”

When it was on the stove she came and sat opposite him. “This doesn’t seem like you, Fletcher. Like what I thought you were.”

He felt that his grin was idiotic. “Long story. Remember the scrap las’ night?”

“I remember that silly woman yelling at me.”

“You left,” he said heavily. “She was still yelling. Jane told her to shut up. She turned on Jane. I was standing there. Standing right there. Told Jane about seeing her Saturday night at the lake. Seeing her in the moonlight with a college boy in a rubber raft. Getting up, putting her suit back on, for God’s sake.”

He wanted to giggle at the startled look on Laura’s face. “What!”

“Just that. Just like I said. And Jane confessed. Told me flat she’d done it. Bitch. Dirty sneaky bitch. Never knew she was like that. Almost killed her. Had the gun on her. Finger on the trigger. She tells me go ahead. And I
can’t do it. The kids in the house, I guess. Stopped me. Something stopped me. All mixed up today. Ellis sticks a knife in my back in the meeting. Sent him away. Got a little drunk. Thinking all night about you. Me being damn prude. Loyal husband or something. No future in that noise. Wanted you and came here. Too … drunk.…”