He shifted on the chair.
“She said she wanted a divorce,” he said. “She said some doctor had told her that divorce was essential if she wanted to remain sane. The poor physical relationship, the extreme poverty was destroying not only her health but her mind. She was pregnant, too. We never got her the divorce,” he said. “I started to get the papers together, but it was too late.”
He stared at his hands.
“A few days later Peggy went out of her mind and stabbed her husband to death in their one-room apartment. It was a measure of her torture. Because she’s a very gentle girl, as you know.”
I knew.
“She came to me then,” Jim said. “I took her to the police. I put up her bail, I defended her. I got her acquitted on a temporary insanity plea, and during this time she miscarried. I tried to help her forget. I gave her money to live on because she didn’t have any profession and I didn’t want her to work in dime stores as she had during her marriage.”
“She told me… alimony.” I heard myself saying, not to him. The thought just had sound that’s all.
He shook his head.
“And you doubted what I told you,” he said. “You surely see now what I meant. The lie about her husband’s death, the failure to tell you about her pregnancy. The lie about her income. Peggy.”
***
I don’t know what time it was. Because I was back in the past. Shadows of years flickered across my mind.
Jim, me, sitting in his office at college. He used to be assistant to the head of the Law School.
Jim talking. “I don’t think you really know about Linda,” he said, his face very serious.
“What about her?” I said.
“She’s been sleeping with me for a year now.”
The crusher. My first blind-eyed attraction for Linda’s sharp intelligence, her long red hair, her svelte form—shattered.
Later on, of course, I found out it was a complete lie. Jim hadn’t even kissed her.
And that brought me back. But not completely. I’d seen that clipping. She’d killed her husband. But the rest? I wasn’t sure.
So, Jim or no Jim, facts or no facts, I was back in the car. Driving at near violation speed up Wilshire. And going in the front door without knocking. Pretending to ignore the shudder I got going back into that house.
She was packing, her face very sad.
“Peggy.”
I stood in the doorway. Knowing that if everything Jim said was true, our love had to end. Because it would have been founded on lies. And the only thing that could console me was that Jim never did say once that Peggy had killed Albert.
She kept packing after she looked at me. She moved around the room, her motions crisp and tight. I watched her for a moment. And I just couldn’t, for the life of me, visualize murder in those hands.
I went in and sat on the bed by the suitcase.
“Peggy.”
No answer.
“I want to tell you why I didn’t come back this afternoon.”
“It doesn’t matter.”
“Doesn’t it?”
“No.”
“I saw Jim this afternoon.”
“I see.”
Coldly. As if she were a woman who didn’t care for anything in the world. Instead of a shy, timorous girl afraid of the world and its multiple terrors.
I reached out and grabbed her wrist. She didn’t honor me with a struggle. She just stared straight ahead.
“He showed me a newspaper clipping, Peggy,” I told her.
Her eyes moved down at me.
“It was the story of how you killed your husband,” I said.
She shuddered and her wrist went limp.
“Jim also told me you were living on his money, not on alimony,” I said.
I wanted desperately for her to snap out angry words at me and make me know they were all lies. But she couldn’t. She didn’t speak. Then she said, softly:
“Let me go.”
“When you tell me why you lied to me. About so many things.”
“I didn’t want to tell you,” she said.
“Why?”
She bit her lower lip and kept her face averted.
“Peggy, I want some truth! Do you hear me?”
She cut off a sob.
“What sort of a girl are you,” I said, “who can speak of love and yet lie incessantly to the person you say you love? What kind of selfish girl are…”
“Selfish!”
She jerked away her hand violently.
“Selfish!” she said, “yes, I’m selfish! Very selfish! I was brought up by a father who hated me. Who did everything he could to make my life miserable. I was shuttled around from city to city, never having a home. Only hotels and motels and dingy little apartment houses near naval bases. I had boys try to rape me. I had older men try to proposition me. And to top it all off, I married an animal who dragged me through poverty and gave me nothing but filth in return. Filth, do you hear! A man who made me pregnant, then tried to force me to get an abortion! A man who had no regard for me. I was a piece of flesh to him. And I killed him and I’d kill him again for the things he did to me! And now… when I find something good for the first time… when I try to hold on to the only beautiful thing I ever had in my whole life… you call me selfish! Yes I’m s-s-selfish…”
Her back was turned from me. She shook violently, crying and trying not to cry. But unable to keep all the pent-up misery of years from flooding out.
I got up quietly. I stood behind her. I put my hands up to hold her shoulders. Then I drew them back. I didn’t know. I felt terribly contrite. Everything seemed to fall into a pattern. Jim had colored an already ugly picture with even uglier hues. For his own purpose.
She cried for a long time. We sat on the bed and I kept drying her eyes with my handkerchief. Later I asked her about her marriage. She told me substantially what Jim had said.
“And the money?” I said.
“Money?”
“Jim’s.”
She looked at me unhappily. “Why… what’s wrong with that? If he wants to give it to me?”
“Baby you’re being kept!”
“He never touched me, Davie.”
“It’s the idea, Peggy.”
She looked at me, a little frightened.
“Peg?”
“Yes, darling?”
“Did you…?”
“What?”
I didn’t speak. Finally I said, “If you did it, Peg, I’ll understand, and I’ll stick by you. I’ll—”
“Love my memory?” she said.
“No, I—”
“I didn’t kill Albert,” she said.
I grabbed at it. I clung to it and it was like a tonic, the first moment of limp ease after a raging fever has abated.
“I believe you,” I said.
***
We moved her into the new place that afternoon, and I tried to get her to tell the police about Jim. But she refused with her little girl logic. Then I suggested that at least we ought to confront Jim himself with his lies, and she refused to do that, too. It wasn’t loyal, she said.
So I went alone to see Jim. I didn’t find him, but I did find somebody else.
Audrey.
Audrey flung her arms around my neck. She had a silk pair of lounging pajamas on. Black and sheer and nothing else. I could feel the uncupped softness of her breasts mold against me.
“Give us a kiss, Dave.”
The thin face, that sweet smile. Her soft lips pressed against mine. And I got a sense of tension in her. The way she clung to me. It wasn’t right.
Suspicion vindicated by the distinct odor of whiskey on her breath.
That was a shock. Audrey had never drunk at college. She’d just follow Jim around, a disciple to his calloused presence. Treasuring the few scraps of affection he gave her.
“Gee, Dave, it’s good to see you,” she said.
“It’s good to see you too, Audrey.”
She drew back,
her small hands still gripping my shoulders.
“Let me see,” she said. “Oh, yes. You’re heavier. Affluence? Or beer?”
I chuckled and leaned over to kiss her cheek.
“Audrey, Audrey,” I said, “what transmutation is this? I remember saddle shoes and bright-eyed naiveté. Now I find a new hairdo, sexy pajamas and… well…”
“And liquor?” she said.
I tried to slough it off.
“Come on in,” she said, “come on in and talk to me. I’m lonely.”
“Is Jim home?” I asked as she led me into the living room, big and empty now.
“He’s on business,” she said.
I got that too. Too chipper, too much a toss-off. She had found the phrase too easy. And from it I knew there’d been a lot of nights when Audrey had stayed home while Jim went out on “business.” The old American synonym for cheating. Yes, it all added up. College had been the preamble.
I sat down and Audrey got a couple of drinks, big ones, and straight. She drained hers swiftly and filled her glass again.
We talked for a long while. It wasn’t too pleasant.
“Sometimes I could scream,” she said later on.
I thought of Peggy. “Sometimes I could, too,” I said.
Then I stood up. “I’d better go,” I said. Before I forget myself, I didn’t add. I went over to her.
“Good-bye, Aud…”
I stopped when she looked me in the eye. Her breath was tortured. It shook her body. Something seemed to be bubbling up in her.
“I could scream,” she said.
“Scream,” I said.
Suddenly she grabbed my arms and pressed her open mouth against my chest. I heard the muffled sound of her screaming at the top of her lungs into my flesh. It lasted until her breath went. Then she raised her darkly flushed face and looked at me, gasping.
“There,” she said, hardly able to speak. “Mostly it’s a pillow. Thanks for the nice cushion.”
She turned away. I followed her from the room. We stood together by the front door.
“Will you give me a good-bye kiss?” she asked.
She raised on her toes and slid her arms around my neck. She brushed her warm lips over mine. Then she smiled and stroked my cheek.
“You’re sweet,” she said. “I wish…” She shrugged. “Oh, what’s the difference, anyway?”
“Good-bye, Audrey.”
“Good-bye, dear.”
I went out the door and down to my car. I got in and sat there a long time staring at the windshield, wishing I’d stayed with Peggy.
Then, as I stepped on the starter, light streamed across the porch and leaped on the car.
“Dave!”
I looked over and saw Audrey come running across the porch and down the steps. She had on a long black raincoat with a hood over her head. I saw a maid at the door watching her go. Then the maid shrugged and shut the door.
Audrey ran around the car, opened the door and slid in.
“How about giving a gal a ride into town?”
“All right,” I said, caught off guard.
Back on Pacific Coast Highway, I asked her where she was going.
“Santa Monica,” she said.
“You’re not quite dressed for evening activity,” I said.
“Nobody will notice,” she said, “where I’m going.”
“Where’s that?”
“Just drop me off downtown,” she parried. “I’m not going any place in particular. I’ll probably go to a movie.”
“Oh.”
I drove in silence a while. Audrey sat staring out at the ribbon of road unraveling under my headlights. Her face was expressionless.
“You can let me off here,” Audrey said at Wilshire and 3rd.
“I’ll take you downtown,” I said.
“You don’t have to.”
I slowed down at Santa Monica Boulevard and 3rd.
“This is fine,” Audrey said.
I kept moving. Down to Broadway. I stopped the car and she turned to look at me.
“I’m not clever, am I?” she said.
Broadway is where all the bars are.
“Come with me,” I said. “Meet my girl.”
“Oh, you have a girl.”
“Come on. Shut the door.”
“No.”
“You’ll like Peggy,” I said.
And from the look on her face I suddenly realized that it was Audrey’s husband who wanted to marry Peggy. And I knew that, contrary to Jim, Audrey didn’t “understand” it.
Audrey shuddered and pushed out of the car.
“Bye,” she said hurriedly and slammed the door.
She was already turning the corner. I started the car and pulled around. I saw her going into The Bamboo Grill.
I drove to Peggy’s and found the note on the door.
Davie: Jim came. He said we had to discuss my legal case. I told him I was waiting for you but he said it’s very important. After all Davie, I have to have a lawyer and I don’t know anyone else and he doesn’t charge me. I’m sorry but I think l should go. Please call me in the morning. Peg.
Legal case. Fat chance that’s what they were discussing. He was pouring more lies into her. I was burned up. I’d told her I was coming right back. She might have waited. After all the tension we’d had between each other—this.
I stood beside my car, glowering, wanting to hit back. I was sick of it all. I wanted to write a note telling her it was all over. Something that would hurt. But I knew I had no right to do that.
I didn’t want to go home, though.
Audrey. Downtown, alone, my old pal Audrey.
I got into my car and drove back to The Bamboo Grill. She wasn’t there, and she wasn’t in the next four bars I tried, either. But I had a drink in each of them.
In the fifth bar, I decided to hell with it. I grabbed a booth and ordered another bourbon and water. I drank half of it. And then she appeared. From the cosmos. From the universe. From the ladies’ room.
And, even slightly potted and disarrayed, Audrey was out of place there.
She almost passed my table.
“Buy you a drink, girlie?” I said.
She turned to cut me off, then smiled as she saw me.
“Davie!”
She slid in across from me. She still had on the rain coat.
“Where did you come from?” she asked.
“From the cosmos, from the universe,” I said.
“I came from the john.”
“Won’t you allow me to purchase you a magnum of Chantilly?”
“That’s lace, isn’t it?”
“Who knows? If it’s lace, we’ll drink it anyway.”
We drank a lot. The time seemed to pass. And I found myself sitting beside her instead of across from her. The strong sensation of drunkenness on me. The loss of balance. The sense that you’re hyper-brilliant, that your brain, though cased in numbing wool, is glittering like a jewel.
And, around midnight, I remember putting my mouth on hers. And feeling all the animal heat in me dredging up. And not caring. She made no attempt to stop my hands from touching her. Her body was warm and soft and willing.
I don’t know what time it was. But somehow we were in the car driving up Broadway. Then over to Wilshire on Lincoln. I remember that. We parked. We were out of the car and into my room. In the darkness, weaving as in a dream. I took off her raincoat, letting all the things I believe in be washed away by the tides of coarse desire flooding through me.
It was dark. She was naked in the cool darkness, waiting for me.
And then a car came past the house in the alley, slowly moving out. And the light played on Audrey’s face. She was lying down on the bed and I had my knee on the mattress beside her.
In the light I saw her face. It was blank. That headlight was like a spotlight of revelation on those expressionless features.
Her cheeks were shimmering with tears.
“Audrey.”
My voice was broken. Something cold billowed up in my body, freezing everything as violently as it had come. I got off the bed and stumbled to my closet. I stood there, trembling, putting on my robe. I stayed there a long time, fumbling with the sash.
Then I went over to the bed. I reached down and pulled the blankets over her nude body. Without a word I bent over and kissed her forehead.
I was afraid to say anything. I was about to straighten up when she put her arms around my neck.
“I’m sorry,” she whispered, “I tried to believe it was right. But…”
***
I almost fell out of the chair in shock when the knocking came on the door. A loud knocking, hard.
I leaped up, wincing at the stiffness in my back and neck. My heart was pounding. My head ached a little.
Suddenly I remembered Audrey with a gasp. My eyes ran over to the dark outline of her body in my bed. Lying there naked, asleep.
I didn’t know what to do. I just stood there shivering, staring stupidly at the bed, then at the door. I felt myself jump as Audrey stirred restlessly. She moaned a little and turned on her side. I think I was paralyzed. All I could do was visualize Peggy standing out there. My claims of innocence would mean nothing to her.
I started for the door.
“What is it?” Audrey asked in sleepy fright. She was propped up on one elbow.
“Shhh!” I said anxiously.
Then I leaped back as the door was shoved open violently and I saw a figure in the doorway, lit by the hall light. A tall figure, square, powerful.
Steig.
He came in and flicked on the light switch.
I don’t know what I felt in those first moments. Shame, fear, anger. But I exploded in his face.
“Get out of here!” I almost yelled. Wondering suddenly if the other tenants in the house were awake by now.
My words were hacked off as Steig drove a violent right into my stomach which doubled me over.
All the night seemed to flood in on me. I was bent over, gasping for air. The floor ran like water to my eyes.
Another blow on the side of my head. Like a cast iron mallet it felt. It drove me into the table and sent me and the whole business crashing over onto the floor.
I was helpless. I’ve read of men who fight back after being struck like that. But how can you fight back when you can’t breathe or see?
I felt one of his beefy hands grab my upper right arm.
“Stop it!” Audrey screamed, “Stop it, Steig!”