Wake Up With a Stranger (9 page)

“Am I? Perhaps I am. It’s only that I always feel a strong compulsion to gather up a loose end.”

“How do you intend to gather it?”

“When I came here, I had a couple of devious tactics in mind. Now that I have met you and talked with you, I prefer to ask directly if you were with Mr. Burns when he died, or in the house the night before.”

“I’ll not answer that, of course. Your loose end, I think, must remain ungathered.”

“Do you think so? As for me, I think I’ll just consider it safely tucked in.” He stood up and extended a hand which, after a moment, she accepted. “It’s been a pleasure, Miss Buchanan. You’re a most attractive woman.”

“Thank you.”

“I’d enjoy very much seeing you again, but I suppose that’s impossible.”

“I suppose it is.”

“Goodby, then.”

“Goodby.”

In the evening after the shop closed Gussie stopped in before going home. “How did it go with the copper?” she asked. “He was only trying to gather up a loose end.”

“What kind of loose end?”

“He thinks someone may have spent Saturday night with Aaron.”

“A woman?”

“Yes. Of course.”

“Does he think she may have had something to do with his death?”

“Oh, no. Nothing like that. It’s definite that he died naturally of a heart attack.”

“Then why the hell does he care who may have slept there? I don’t get it.”

“Well, I suppose it’s some kind of offense of omission if you know about a death and don’t report it. He didn’t seem inclined to make much of an issue of it, however.”

Gussie leaned her head back against the chair and closed her eyes.

“Was
a woman there with Aaron, darling?”

“How would I know?”

“You’d know if you were the woman, wouldn’t you?”

“Do you think I was having an affair with Aaron?”

“Affair? That’s a fancy word that I wouldn’t know about. I know damn well you were sleeping with him.”

“What makes you so sure?”

“Darling, darling, this is old Gussie speaking. You don’t have to play cat and mouse with me. I’ve slept with enough men myself to be able to tell when one’s being slept with. Especially one like Aaron, who simply exuded gratitude and devotion. Don’t you think I’ve seen him looking at you?”

“I didn’t dream that it was so apparent.”

“To no one but Gussie, darling.”

“Do you blame me, Gussie?”

“God, no! Don’t be absurd, darling.” Gussie laughed softly. “He was a starved and lonely guy with a thousand vague oppressions, married to a bitch and living from habit. He needed you and had you, and I’m glad. I truly loved the sad bastard in my own way, and I’d have slept with him myself if he’d ever asked me.”

Watching Gussie’s face, like a death mask with its closed eyes, Donna had for the first time an intimation of just what burden of grief might now be carried in Gussie’s heart, silently in the bony body. It had not once occurred to her that Gussie might feel for Aaron any emotion beyond the ordinary. And she was ashamed that Gussie had been so sentient, while she had been so dull. She was also ashamed she had lied to Gussie about Saturday night. She would have liked now to renounce the lie, but she couldn’t quite bring herself to do it. So she decided, as a compromise, to tell still another lie that would at least embrace part of the truth.

“The truth is,” she said, “I went to Aaron’s, but I didn’t stay all night. We went there after dinner, and later he took me out to Mother’s.”

“Did you tell the copper that?”

“No. I didn’t think it was necessary. I refused to answer his questions about it.”

“Well, under the circumstances, that’s merely a way of telling him everything without committing yourself to anything. I shouldn’t worry about it if I were you, darling, and if you need any expert lying done, don’t fail to call on Gussie. I’ve had a lot of experience, and I’m one of the most convincing liars on earth.”

“Thanks, Gussie.”

Donna stood up and walked around the room, stretching the muscles of her back and legs. She felt exhausted by the tensions of the day, and she was thankful it was over. Her head throbbed, and she pressed her hand against her forehead.

“Is everyone gone?” she said.

“Yes. I assumed the authority to tell them not to come in tomorrow. Was I right?”

“Of course. We must certainly remain closed at least until after Aaron is buried.”

“What will be done about the shop, I wonder.”

“I don’t know. It will be up to Aaron’s wife, I suppose. His widow. It’s a fine shop, and it’s getting better all the time, and if she’s wise she will let it continue to make money for her.”

“She’s not wise. She’s a stupid, lazy slut who likes to lie on her tail and play sick, and it’s my opinion that she’ll convert her responsibilities into cash as quickly as possible.”

“I hope not.”

“So do I, but I shouldn’t count on it. It will be a damn, shame if she does, especially for you, darling, now that you’ve got started so beautifully with your originals.”

“I’ve been thinking about it — about the shop, I mean, and what will happen to it — and perhaps I’ll go and talk to Mrs. Burns about it.”

“To try to sell her on keeping it open?”

“Yes. I could manage it for her, Gussie. With your help I know I could do it. I did it while Aaron was in the hospital the last time, and I could do it permanently if she would only let me.”

“Of course you could, darling. Your judgment is as good as Aaron’s was, and you have other assets that he lacked. Actually, given a free hand, you would certainly make a bigger thing of the shop than he could have.”

“Do you think she will let me, Gussie?”

“I told you that I don’t, and I don’t. I’m sorry, darling, but she simply won’t want to be bothered with it.”

“What shall we do if she refuses?”

“Look for jobs, I guess. What the hell else will there be to do?”

Donna stood quietly for a moment, gnawing a knuckle.

“Damn her to hell,” she said. “She tried her best to ruin Aaron’s life, and now, because she is a stupid woman, she’ll ruin ours if we don’t stop her. Gussie, how much do you think the shop would sell for?”

“I don’t know. As a guess, two hundred thousand. Certainly no less. Why?”

“I was wondering if it would be possible to buy it. For me to buy it.”

“I don’t know where you’d get two hundred thousand dollars, or even two hundred thousand cents in a hurry, but I know where we can get a good strong drink, which is available and at the moment even more essential. Are you interested?”

“No.” Donna shook her head. “Thanks just the same, Gussie, but I think I’ll stay on for a while.”

“All right, darling. If you want me, you know where to find me. Take care, now.”

Gussie went out, and Donna sat down and removed her glasses and began to rub her eyes. She heard the rear door open and close as Gussie left and continued to sit and rub her eyes, wondering how she could best approach Aaron’s widow, or how she could possibly get hold of enormous amounts of money like two hundred thousand dollars.

Sharkey Mulloy was a man who loved his work. Those who saw Sharkey on the streets of St. Louis were never aware that in him existed a glimmer of the glory that had been Greece, a speck of the grandeur that had been Rome. It was true that there were some, even in this enlightened age, who considered his work pagan in practice and sinful in nature, but even Sir Thomas Browne, himself a Christian, was unable to discredit entirely this vestige of Christian idiocy.

Now, this day, Sharkey sat in a vault below a chapel and listened to the sound of a mourning organ. He could hear the organ only faintly, and he wished he could not hear it at all, for he did not like it. He did not, as a matter of fact, like anything about what was now going on in the chapel, for he considered it a sticky business better eliminated. A realist, however, he accepted it as a necessary prelude to his own work, something to be tolerated out of deference to deluded folk who paid the tariff but couldn’t understand the proper way of doing a thing. After the organ was silent and the chapel was empty, when what was left came down on the elevator into his hands, things would be different and better by far. The whole complex and obscure confusion of dogma and display would become, under his definitive ministration, serene and clear, and pure as fire.

In due time he heard the elevator descending and went out to receive his charge from Mr. Fairstead, who always made the delivery himself in what Sharkey had to admit was a nice gesture in the last phase of a last rite. Today, as usual, Mr. Fairstead looked somber below the neck and quite cheerful above, and his voice, when he spoke, agreed with the part above.

“Well, here he is, Sharkey,” he said. “Be sure to give us back our three percent.”

“Net,” Sharkey said.

Mr. Fairstead laughed and went, the elevator groaning upward, and Sharkey took over, warmed as always by the intimate little exchange that had not varied a bit in twenty years, except that the personal pronoun changed its gender to suit the occasion. He worked swiftly and efficiently, and it required only a short while to complete in the vault what had been begun in the chapel, to make in action the grand consignment that had already been made in words. This done, and with a period of waiting now to be endured, Sharkey put on his hat and went around the corner to a tavern.

He returned to his vault after an hour and read an Agatha Christie murder mystery for something over another hour. Finally, the time past, he extracted Mr. Fairstead’s three percent, and extracted with a magnet from the three percent a number of long screws. All screws removed, he put the three percent in a temporary receptacle and sealed it. On the outside of the receptacle, he stuck a gummed label on which he had previously printed in clear block letters:
BURNS, AARON — SPLENDID IN ASHES.

He was actually required to print only the name. The added little epitaph, a phrase lifted from Browne’s
Hydriotaphia,
was Sharkey’s own idea.

The residue of Aaron Burns, the three percent that Mr. Fairstead facetiously claimed and Sharkey Mulloy carefully preserved, really belonged, of course, to Shirley Smith Burns, his widow, who did not linger to claim her property. Arrangements with Mr. Fairstead for a suitable urn and a perpetual-care niche in the chapel of the crematorium had been completed, and there seemed nothing left for her to do. Besides, she was feeling quite ghastly, and she had this odd sensation of her skull’s being packed loosely with sawdust which shifted about in the most peculiar manner every time she moved her head. She was being driven home by Earl Joslin, Aaron’s lawyer, and she thought with resignation, looking out the car window at the remnants of snow, that it was unfortunate that she had been compelled to hurry all the way back from Florida at such an inconvenient time.

Many things in the life of Shirley Smith Burns had been, and were still, unfortunate. Perhaps the single most unfortunate thing — though it is actually impossible ever to pinpoint this — was the diphtheria which she had as a child. This was the only genuinely organic illness she ever had in her life, and she very nearly died of it, but all in all, in the final stages of recovery, she enjoyed it immensely. She was extravagantly loved and coddled and waited upon. She was the significant center of her universe. The romance of the experience, as well as the attention, was not lost upon her, for there is something poetic in the mortality of a child, and no one is more aware of it than children.

For a long time she amused herself by playing imaginative variations on the theme of her death, and it was too bad, in a way, that she could not actually have died. The only reservations she felt in this childish death wish were the knowledge that she would be unable to attend the funeral. She recovered from the diphtheria, but she never recovered from the convalescence. Moreover and worse, neither did her mother. She, having seen her only child imperiled, waged thereafter a continuing terrified battle against all the shadows of death. And Shirley grew up in the shadows. Later, when she was grown, when impatience and indifference succeeded concern, it was too late to come out from these shadows.

This change did not occur until she lost her mother. That intrepid woman, constantly alert to the designs of Death upon her daughter, was careless of his designs upon herself, and she let him steal up on her. She died suddenly one spring, and the following winter her husband died of a bronchial pneumonia he might have survived if he had not learned from his family to despise and avoid doctors.

Shirley was left with a modest income from investments and an endless repertoire of psychosomatic ills, and eventually, by chance or fate or the caprice of the devil, she met and married Aaron Burns. She married him for several reasons, and none of them was love. Most compelling of the reasons was that he was gentle enough to be imposed upon and clever enough to make lots of money. But what she was never capable of learning was that he needed most of all, because of his spiritual desolation, a simple carnal acceptance in the broad meaning of the terms. Unable to give him this in even a narrow sense, let alone a broad one, she left it to someone else.

She was a selfish woman, but she was no fool. She was certainly aware, after she began denying him herself, that he was getting satisfaction elsewhere. She never suspected, however, his actual method before Donna, and it would have been better for her if she had. She thought that he probably kept a mistress, despising him for it as a man too weak for pure devotion, but she never despised herself for her part in it. The irrational thing about her reaction was the really virulent hatred she developed for the woman who was giving and getting what she herself did not care to give or accept, and there was a time when she felt that it was absolutely necessary, if she was to retain her sanity, to know who the woman was. She hired a detective to follow Aaron for one month, but the detective, a reasonable fellow who did not consider a whorehouse and a mistress synonomous, submitted a negative report. After that she did not try to discover the identity of the woman, but she remained convinced that she existed, certain in her own mind that the detective was an incompetent and Aaron a monster of deception. She found solace in suffering, and began going frequently to Florida.

They turned into the drive and stopped beside the house, and Joslin came around to open the door on her side of the car. With one hand lightly on her elbow, he assisted her into the house and upstairs, and waited in the hall outside her room until she called to him to enter. When he went in, she was reclining on a chaise longue, wearing a pale negligee that emphasized the pallor of her skin and the shadows under her eyes. She incited in him a kind of delicate crawling revulsion, a faint unpleasant tickling below the diaphragm. He was here because he was Aaron’s lawyer and because of a genuine liking and regret for Aaron himself. But as soon as he had settled Aaron’s affairs, he never again wanted to see Aaron’s widow.

“You look exhausted,” he said courteously. “Don’t you think we had better postpone everything for a few days?”

“No. I’m feeling better now, and I want your advice about several things. Tell me again the terms of the will.”

“They’re quite simple. Everything comes to you except the two bequests to Miss Ingram and Miss Buchanan.”

“One thousand to Miss Ingram and ten to Miss Buchanan?”

“That’s right.”

“It’s quite a substantial difference. I wonder why.”

“As I told you, Miss Buchanan is quite a talented young woman. Her original designs have contributed a great deal to the reputation of the shop, and you may remember that she managed the business very competently when Aaron was laid up with his second heart attack. I’m sure the ten thousand is only a kind of bonus in recognition of these services.”

“Which one was she?”

“At the chapel?”

“Yes, of course.”

“The one with glasses. Quite a striking young woman, I think.”

He paid the compliment in malice, but he paid it deftly with the intent and without the appearance. “Can the will be broken?” she asked. “Just the two bequests, you mean?”

“Naturally.”

“No. I can see no possibility at all. Even if there were, I’d hardly advise it. After all, the amount involved is insignificant compared to the total estate. The action would cost too much for so little. Moreover, if you’ll excuse my saying so, I feel that Aaron’s last wishes should be respected.”

“It’s the principle. You know perfectly well what everyone will think when this woman receives such a large amount.”

“Oh, nonsense. I’m sure no one will think anything of the sort. Besides, a court action would certainly be a poor way of detracting attention.”

“All right, I won’t make an issue of it if you think I shouldn’t. I want your opinion on the shop.”

“What about the shop?”

“What would you estimate it is worth?”

“Off hand, it’s impossible to be accurate. I’d guess not less than two hundred thousand dollars as it now stands.”

“Will it be difficult to find a buyer?”

“I shouldn’t think so. Its reputation is superb. Probably has the most desirable patronage in town. However, if you really want my opinion, I advise you not to sell.”

“Why not?”

“The shop is a highly successful enterprise. Nowhere else could you invest your money to receive such large returns.”

“I’m not a business woman. Besides, I am not well. I couldn’t possibly run it.”

“Of course not. You would have to employ a manager who is skilled in that type of business.”

“I wouldn’t even be able to judge the efficiency of a manager. I’d be vulnerable to all sorts of errors and impositions.”

“Do you still want my advice?”

“Certainly. That’s why I asked you to stay.”

“Very well, then. I advise you to keep the shop and to keep Miss Buchanan as its manager.”

“The woman who gets the bequest?”

“That’s right. Donna Buchanan. I know that Aaron had the highest regard for her, and I know from other sources that she’s truly a fine designer. The line of originals she’s initiated compares favorably, I’m told, with the best anywhere, and it’s gaining recognition from women who are willing and able to pay very fancy prices for their original gowns. There’s simply no way to estimate the potential of this kind of enterprise.”

“No. I don’t wish to be encumbered with it. I wish to liquidate all assets and leave this city as soon as possible.”

“Just as you say, of course.”

“Will you handle it for me?”

“Certainly.”

“That’s settled, then.”

“You understand, I hope, that the final settlement of an estate requires time.”

“Oh, yes. Naturally. Just expedite it as much as you can.” She closed her eyes, pressing her fingers upon the lids. “Now I think I had better rest. It has been a difficult day, and I’m really feeling quite ill. Please excuse me for not seeing you out.”

“It’s perfectly all right.”

He stood up. Screened by her lowered lids, he permitted his revulsion to show for a moment in his face. Turning, he walked silently out of the room and downstairs and out of the house.

Behind him, on the lounge in the room where Donna had lately walked with pride in herself and contempt for the room’s owner, Shirley Burns lay quietly with her eyes still closed. She had told for once the truth about herself. She was really quite ill with a functional illness, and the illness was fury and hate.

Her lips moved soundlessly in the shape of an epithet.

From the crematorium chapel, Donna and Gussie walked together to a stop where they caught, after a few minutes, a bus downtown. They got off near the shop and walked from there to a nearby cocktail lounge. Entering it, they sat at a tiny table in a corner. Soft light was admitted through perforations in the patterns of constellations, and on three walls, at intervals, were tapestries of Persian design. They ordered two Martinis. Gussie lifted her fragile glass at once and took a generous swallow. Then she sat for thirty seconds and looked at the olive.

“Well,” she said, “that’s that.”

“Yes, it is,” Donna said, “isn’t it?”

“I’m glad he wasn’t buried,” Gussie said. “What a filthy dismal day it would be to be buried! Do you mind if I’m morbid, darling?”

“Not at all. I’m feeling rather morbid myself.”

“I may even get slightly drunk as well, which would only have the effect of making me more morbid. Would you object to that?”

“Whatever you want to do is all right with me, Gussie.”

“Thank you kindly, Mistress Mary. That’s from a nursery rhyme, you know. That Mistress Mary bit. Do you know why I am thinking of that particular nursery rhyme at this moment? It’s because Mary had a garden, and we have a garden, and the question was and is, how the hell does it grow? Well, not so well, I guess. Ours, that is. The garden surely looks like it’s going to hell, doesn’t it, darling?”

“Maybe not, Gussie.”

“Anyhow, never mind. I’m just a filthy morbid woman, and I wish I were dead instead of Aaron, and that’s the truth. It’s the truth at this time, at any rate, but I admit it may no longer be true tomorrow, or even an hour from now.”