"You listen to me! I won't have you running around like a common trollop with some sissy boy who's got your head all filled up with moonlight. Do you hear me?"
Susan slapped her across the face.
Ann Norton's eyes blinked and then opened wide in stunned surprise. They looked at each other for a moment in silence, shocked. A tiny sound came and died in Susan's throat.
"I'm going upstairs," she said. "I'll be out by Tuesday at the latest."
"Floyd was here," Mrs Norton said. Her face was still rigid from the slap. Her daughter's finger marks stood out in red, like exclamation points.
"I'm through with Floyd," Susan said tonelessly. "Get used to the idea. Tell your harpy friend Mabel all about it on the telephone, why don't you? Maybe then it will seem real to you."
"Floyd loves you, Susan. This is...ruining him. He broke down and told me everything. He poured out his heart to me." Her eyes shone with the memory of it. "He broke down at the end and cried like a baby."
Susan thought how unlike Floyd that was. She wondered if her mother could be making it up, and knew by her eyes that she was not.
"Is that what you want for me, Mom? A crybaby? Or did you just fall in love with the idea of blond-haired grandchildren? I suppose I bother you--you can't feel your job is complete until you see me married and settled down to a good man you can put your thumb on. Settled down with a fellow who'll get me pregnant and turn me into a matron in a hurry. That's the scoop, isn't it? Well, what about what I want?"
"Susan, you don't know what you want."
And she said it with such absolute, convinced certainty that for a moment Susan was tempted to believe her. An image came to her of herself and her mother, standing here in set positions, her mother by her rocker and she by the door; only they were tied together by a hank of green yarn, a cord that had grown frayed and weak from many restless tuggings. Image transformed into her mother in a nimrod's hat, the band sportily pierced with many different flies. Trying desperately to reel in a large trout wearing a yellow print shift. Trying to reel it in for the last time and pop it away in the wicker creel. But for what purpose? To mount it? To eat it?
"No, Mom. I know exactly what I want. Ben Mears."
She turned and went up the stairs.
Her mother ran after her and called up shrilly: "You can't get a room! You haven't any money!"
"I've got a hundred in checking and three hundred in savings," Susan replied calmly. "And I can get a job down at Spencer's, I think. Mr Labree has offered several times."
"All he'll care about is looking up your dress," Mrs Norton said, but her voice had gone down an octave. Much of her anger had left her and she felt a little frightened.
"Let him," Susan said. "I'll wear bloomers."
"Honey, don't be mad." She came two steps up the stairs. "I only want what's best for--"
"Spare it, Mom. I'm sorry I slapped you. That was awful of me. I do love you. But I'm moving out. It's way past time. You must see that."
"You think it over," Mrs Norton said, now clearly sorry as well as frightened. "I still don't think I spoke out of turn. That Ben Mears, I've seen showboats like him before. All he's interested in is--"
"No. No more."
She turned away.
Her mother came up another step and called after her: "When Floyd left here he was in an awful state. He--"
But the door to Susan's room closed and cut off her words.
She lay down on her bed--which had been decorated with stuffed toys and a poodle dog with a transistor radio in its belly not so long ago--and lay looking at the wall, trying not to think. There were a number of Sierra Club posters on the wall, but not so long ago she had been surrounded by posters clipped from Rolling Stone and Creem and Crawdaddy, pictures of her idols--Jim Morrison and John Lennon and Dave van Ronk and Chuck Berry. The ghost of those days seemed to crowd in on her like bad time exposures of the mind.
She could almost see the newsprint, standing out on the cheap pulp stock. going-places young writer and young wife involved in "maybe" motorcycle fatality. The rest in carefully couched innuendoes. Perhaps a picture taken at the scene by a local photographer, too gory for the local paper, just right for Mabel's kind.
And the worst was that a seed of doubt had been planted. Stupid. Did you think he was in cold storage before he came back here? That he came wrapped in a germ-proof cellophane bag, like a motel drinking glass? Stupid. Yet the seed had been planted. And for that she could feel something more than adolescent pique for her mother--she could feel something black that bordered on hate.
She shut the thoughts--not out but away--and put an arm over her face and drifted into an uncomfortable doze that was broken by the shrill of the telephone downstairs, then more sharply by her mother's voice calling, "Susan! It's for you!"
She went downstairs, noticing it was just after five-thirty. The sun was in the west. Mrs Norton was in the kitchen, beginning supper. Her father wasn't home yet.
"Hello?"
"Susan?" The voice was familiar, but she could not put a name to it immediately.
"Yes, who's this?"
"Eva Miller, Susan. I've got some bad news."
"Has something happened to Ben?" All the spit seemed to have gone out of her mouth. Her hand came up and touched her throat. Mrs Norton had come to the kitchen door and was watching, a spatula held in one hand.
"Well, there was a fight. Floyd Tibbits showed up here this afternoon--"
"Floyd!"
Mrs Norton winced at her tone.
"--and I said Mr Mears was sleeping. He said all right, just as polite as ever, but he was dressed awful funny. I asked him if he felt all right. He had on an old-fashioned overcoat and a funny hat and he kept his hands in his pockets. I never thought to mention it to Mr Mears when he got up. There's been so much excitement--"
"What happened?" Susan nearly screamed.
"Well, Floyd beat him up," Eva said unhappily. "Right out in my parking lot. Sheldon Corson and Ed Craig went out and dragged him off."
"Ben. Is Ben all right?"
"I guess not."
"What is it?" She was holding the phone very tightly.
"Floyd got in one last crack and sent Mr Mears back against that little foreign car of his, and he hit his head. Carl Foreman took him over to Cumberland Receiving, and he was unconscious. I don't know anything else. If you--"
She hung up, ran to the closet, and pulled her coat off the hanger.
"Susan, what is it?"
"That nice boy Floyd Tibbits," Susan said, hardly aware that she had begun to cry. "He's put Ben in the hospital."
She ran out without waiting for a reply.
TWO
She got to the hospital at six-thirty and sat in an uncomfortable plastic contour chair, staring blankly at a copy of Good Housekeeping. And I'm the only one, she thought. How damned awful. She had thought of calling Matt Burke, but the thought of the doctor coming back and finding her gone had stopped her.
The minutes crawled by on the waiting room clock, and at ten minutes of seven, a doctor with a sheaf of papers in one hand stepped through the door and said, "Miss Norton?"
"That's right. Is Ben all right?"
"That's not an answerable question at this point." He saw the dread come into her face and added: "He seems to be, but we'll want him here for two or three days. He's got a hairline fracture, multiple bruises, contusions, and one hell of a black eye."
"Can I see him?"
"No, not tonight. He's been sedated."
"For a minute? Please? One minute?"
He sighed. "You can look in on him, if you like. He'll probably be asleep. I don't want you to say anything to him unless he speaks to you."
He took her up to the third floor and then down to a room at the far end of a medicinal-smelling corridor. The man in the other bed was reading a magazine and looked up at them desultorily.
Ben was lying with his eyes closed, a sheet pulled up to his chin. He was so pale and still
that for one terrified moment Susan was sure he was dead; that he had just slipped away while she and the doctor had been talking downstairs. Then she marked the slow, steady rise and fall of his chest and felt a relief so great that she swayed a little on her feet. She looked at his face closely, hardly noticing the way it had been marked. Sissy boy, her mother had called him, and Susan could see how she might have gotten that idea. His features were strong but sensitive (she wished there was a better word than "sensitive" that was the word you used to describe the local librarian who wrote stilted Spenserian sonnets to daffodils in his spare time; but it was the only word that fit). Only his hair seemed virile in the traditional sense. Black and heavy, it seemed almost to float above his face. The white bandage on the left side above the temple stood out in sharp, telling contrast.
I love the man, she thought. Get well, Ben. Get well and finish your book so we can go away from the Lot together, if you want me. The Lot has turned bad for both of us.
"I think you'd better leave now," the doctor said. "Perhaps tomorrow--"
Ben stirred and made a thick sound in his throat. His eyelids opened slowly, closed, opened again. His eyes were dark with sedation, but the knowledge of her presence was in them. He moved his hand over hers. Tears spilled out of her eyes and she smiled and squeezed his hand.
He moved his lips and she bent to hear.
"They're real killers in this town, aren't they?"
"Ben, I'm so sorry."
"I think I knocked out two of his teeth before he decked me," Ben whispered. "Not bad for a writer fella."
"Ben--"
"I think that will be enough, Mr Mears," the doctor said. "Give the airplane glue a chance to set."
Ben shifted his eyes to the doctor. "Just a minute."
The doctor rolled his eyes. "That's what she said."
Ben's eyelids slipped down again, then came up with difficulty. He said something unintelligible.
Susan bent closer. "What, darling?"
"Is it dark yet?"
"Yes."
"Want you to go see..."
"Matt?"
He nodded. "Tell him...I said for you to be told everything. Ask him if he...knows Father Callahan. He'll understand."
"Okay," Susan said. "I'll give him the message. You sleep now. Sleep well, Ben."
"'Kay. Love you." He muttered something else, twice, and then his eyes closed. His breathing deepened.
"What did he say?" the doctor asked.
Susan was frowning. "It sounded like 'Lock the windows,'" she said.
THREE
Eva Miller and Weasel Craig were in the waiting room when she went back to get her coat. Eva was wearing an old fall coat with a rusty fur collar, obviously kept for best, and Weasel was floating in an outsized motorcycle jacket. Susan warmed at the sight of both of them.
"How is he?" Eva asked.
"Going to be all right, I think." She repeated the doctor's diagnosis, and Eva's face relaxed.
"I'm so glad. Mr Mears seems like a very nice man. Nothing like this has ever happened at my place. And Parkins Gillespie had to lock Floyd up in the drunk tank. He didn't act drunk, though. Just sort of...dopey and confused."
Susan shook her head. "It doesn't sound like Floyd at all."
There was a moment of uncomfortable silence.
"Ben's a lovely fella," Weasel said, and patted Susan's hand. "He'll be up and about in no time. You wait and see."
"I'm sure he will be," Susan said, and squeezed his hand in both of hers. "Eva, isn't Father Callahan the priest at St Andrew's?"
"Yes, why?"
"Oh...curious. Listen, thank you both for coming. If you could come back tomorrow--"
"We'll do that," Weasel said. "Sure we will, won't we, Eva?" He slipped an arm about her waist. It was a long reach, but he got there eventually.
"Yes, we will."
Susan walked out to the parking lot with them and then drove back to Jerusalem's Lot.
FOUR
Matt did not answer at her knock or yell Come in! as he usually did. Instead, a very careful voice which she hardly recognized said, "Who is it?" very quietly from the other side.
"Susie Norton, Mr Burke."
He opened the door and she felt real shock at the change in him. He looked old and haggard. A moment after that, she saw that he was wearing a heavy gold crucifix. There was something so strange and ludicrous about that ornate five-and-dime corpus lying against his checked flannel shirt that she almost laughed--but didn't.
"Come in. Where's Ben?"
She told him and his face grew long. "So Floyd Tibbits of all people decides to play wronged lover, is that it? Well, it couldn't have happened at a more inopportune time. Mike Ryerson was brought back from Portland late this afternoon for burial preparations at Foreman's. And I suppose our trip up to the Marsten House will have to be put off--"
"What trip? What's this about Mike?"
"Would you like coffee?" he asked absently.
"No. I want to find out what's going on. Ben said you know."
"That," he said, "is a very tall order. Easy for Ben to say I'm to tell you everything. Harder to do. But I will try."
"What--"
He held up one hand. "One thing first, Susan. You and your mother went down to the new shop the other day."
Susan's brow furrowed. "Sure. Why?"
"Can you give me your impressions of the place, and more specifically, of the man who runs it?"
"Mr Straker?"
"Yes."
"Well, he's quite charming," she said. "Courtly might be an even better word. He complimented Glynis Mayberry on her dress and she blushed like a schoolgirl. And asked Mrs Boddin about the bandage on her arm...she spilled some hot fat on it, you know. He gave her a recipe for a poultice. Wrote it right down. And when Mabel came in..." She laughed a bit at the memory.
"Yes?"
"He got her a chair," Susan said. "Not a chair, actually, but a chair. More like a throne. A great carved mahogany thing. He brought it out of the back room all by himself, smiling and chatting with the other ladies all the time. But it must have weighed at least three hundred pounds. He plonked it down in the middle of the floor and escorted Mabel to it. Took her arm, you know. And she was giggling. If you've seen Mabel giggling, you've seen everything. And he served coffee. Very strong but very good."
"Did you like him?" Matt asked, watching her closely.
"This is all a part of it, isn't it?" she asked.
"It might be, yes."
"All right, then. I'll give you a woman's reaction. I did and I didn't. I was attracted to him in a mildly sexual way, I guess. Older man, very urbane, very charming, very courtly. You know looking at him that he could order from a French menu and know what wine would go with what, not just red or white but the year and even the vineyard. Very definitely not the run of fellow you see around here. But not effeminate in the least. Lithe, like a dancer. And of course there's something attractive about a man who is so unabashedly bald." She smiled a little defensively, knowing there was color in her cheeks, wondering if she had said more than she intended.
"But then you didn't," Matt said.
She shrugged. "That's harder to put my finger on. I think...I think I sensed a certain contempt under the surface. A cynicism. As if he were playing a certain part, and playing it well, but as if he knew he wouldn't have to pull out all the stops to fool us. A touch of condescension." She looked at him uncertainly. "And there seemed to be something a little bit cruel about him. I don't really know why."
"Did anyone buy anything?"
"Not much, but he didn't seem to mind. Mom bought a little knick-knack shelf from Yugoslavia, and that Mrs Petrie bought a lovely little drop-leaf table, but that was all I saw. He didn't seem to mind. Just urged people to tell their friends he was open, to come back by and not be strangers. Very Old World charming."
"And do you think people were charmed?"
"By and large, yes," Susan said, mentally comparing her mother
's enthusiastic impression of R.T. Straker to her immediate dislike of Ben.
"You didn't see his partner?"
"Mr Barlow? No, he's in New York, on a buying trip."
"Is he?" Matt said, speaking to himself. "I wonder. The elusive Mr Barlow."
"Mr Burke, don't you think you better tell me what all this is about?"
He sighed heavily.
"I suppose I must try. What you've just told me is disturbing. Very disturbing. It all fits so well..."
"What? What does?"
"I have to start," he began, "with meeting Mike Ryerson in Dell's tavern last night...which already seems a century ago."
FIVE
It was twenty after eight by the time he had finished, and they had both drunk two cups of coffee.
"I believe that's everything," Matt said. "And now shall I do my Napoleon imitation? Tell you about my astral conversations with Toulouse-Lautrec?"
"Don't be silly," she said. "There's something going on, but not what you think. You must know that."
"I did until last night."
"If no one has it in for you, as Ben suggested, then maybe Mike did it himself. In a delirium or something." That sounded thin, but she pushed ahead anyway. "Or maybe you fell asleep without knowing and dreamed the whole thing. I've dozed off without knowing it before and lost a whole fifteen or twenty minutes."
He shrugged tiredly. "How does a person defend testimony no rational mind will accept at face value? I heard what I heard. I was not asleep. And something has me worried...rather badly worried. According to the old literature, a vampire cannot simply walk into a man's house and suck his blood. No. He has to be invited. But Mike Ryerson invited Danny Glick in last night. And I invited Mike myself!"
"Matt, has Ben told you about his new book?"
He fiddled with his pipe but didn't light it. "Very little. Only that it's somehow connected with the Marsten House."
"Has he told you he had a very traumatic experience in the Marsten House as a boy?"
He looked up sharply. "In it? No."
"He went in on a dare. He wanted to join a club, and the initiation was for him to go into the Marsten House and bring something out. He did, as a matter of fact--but before he left, he went up to the second-floor bedroom where Hubie Marsten hung himself. When he opened the door, he saw Hubie hanging there. He opened his eyes. Ben ran. That's festered in him for twenty-four years. He came back to the Lot to try to write it out of his system."