“What a day,” Verne said. “Getting hotter each minute. Maybe it’s the fiery furnace.”
“Maybe so.”
With the windows open fresh air was sweeping into the room. But the air was dry and hot. The room had taken on an amber cast, with all the shades down. In the amber dimness Barbara moved about, carrying things to the chest of drawers and into the closet.
“Can I sit down?” Verne said.
“Yes. You can sit and watch.”
“When I’m needed, call me.” He sat down on the edge of the bed. The bed groaned under him. “It doesn’t like me. Listen to it. Like a thing in pain.”
“Maybe it’s trying to warn me,” Barbara said.
Verne ignored her. He stretched out on the bed, making himself comfortable. His body felt heavy and tired. Sweat was running down his arms, inside his shirt, collecting in pools at his armpits. His neck was damp, his collar rubbed irritatingly. He unbuttoned his top shirt button and removed his tie.
“Mind?” he asked.
She paused, her arms full of clothes. “What?”
“I took off my tie.”
She turned around and went on working. Verne sighed. He wanted to help, but he was much too dragged out by the mounting heat. On days like this, sitting at his desk, he always found himself falling asleep, sliding slowly into the typewriter, until his forehead came up hard against the keys and tab indicators. Then he would come awake with a start and return to the endless stacks of files and memos.
But now he could relax. There were no memos. It was all over with. All in the past. There would be no more forms, no more punch cards, files, tabs, endless papers. He had seen the dusty stacks in the closet of the office. The curtain had been rung down. He could relax.
But he was restless. And irritable. He stirred, moving around on the bed. He took out his handkerchief and wiped his neck.
There were drops of moisture on the inside of his glasses. He wiped them, too.
“Maybe the sun is expanding,” he murmured.
“Yes, it is getting pretty steamy in here. Like a hothouse.”
“I feel myself slowly taking root and growing fast to the ground. All desire to move around is gone.”
“You don’t intend to help me at all, then?”
“What can I do? You were supposed to let me know when I was needed.”
“You could open this box. It’s nailed shut. I don’t even know how to start on it.”
“Don’t you?” He grinned, getting up from the bed with great effort. “Well, I suppose that’s not too much to ask.” He pulled himself together elaborately. “This would be a good day to lie under a bush in the shade. With the leaves blowing all around you. Where’s a hammer?”
“Look around. There should be one with the boards and things. Carl got it for me last night.”
Verne found a hammer and a screwdriver. He began to pull the nails out of the top of the box with the claw of the hammer. Presently the lid fell off. He stood it up against the wall in the corner of the room.
“There you are. Any other chores?”
“Already? My, but men are handy. You can go and lie down again, if you want.”
Verne put the hammer down and walked back to the bed. Barbara came over with an armload of clothes.
“Move. The dresser is full.”
“Move? Move where?”
“To the end of the bed. I have to put these somewhere until I get another dresser.”
Verne pulled himself over and she dropped the stack of dresses and skirts and slacks down beside him. “What a lot of stuff.” They seemed to make him uneasy. He did not know why. “Women always have so much junk. What are you going to use all these for?”
“What do you care?”
“Just curious. We’re only going to be here a week. You could have left most of them crated up.”
“Psychological reasons.” She shot him a quick glance. “That’s the way women are. All types of women.”
Verne grunted. “More?” She was bringing a second armload over to the bed. Verne moved nearer the end. “I can’t give you much more room. Not without getting off completely. And I never do that.”
“There’s just a few more coming.” Barbara laid the remainder of her dresses with the others. Some suits slid gradually to one side until they were resting partly off the bed. “Push those back, Verne. Will you?”
“Sure.” He pushed the suits up again.
Barbara wiped her forehead with her sleeve. Her cheeks were red. She was perspiring, too. “That’s enough for one day. The rest can wait.” She sat down on the floor a little way from the bed. “God.”
Verne gazed down at her, in her dark slacks and red checkered shirt. On the back of her neck he could see drops of perspiration, at the narrow line between her collar and her brown hair. In the closeness of the room, steamy with moisture, he could sense the faint tinge of musk, the mist of human presence that was rising from the woman’s body, from her arms and shoulders and neck, just a few feet from him. A smell of sweet closeness mixed with the crisp smell of the checkered shirt.
“This is pleasant,” Verne murmured, stretching out on the bed as best he could. He leaned his head against the wall for a moment and then rolled over so that he lay resting on a stack of her clothes. He watched her idly, her back, her brown hair caught in place with a clasp, her bare arms. Her arms fascinated him. They were so full and rich. Golden. With the little hairs on them. Alive.
“Yes,” Barbara said.
“Yes? Yes what?”
“It’s pleasant.”
“Oh.”
She had not turned toward him. She was staring off into space. What was she thinking about? In the silence of the room he could hear her breathing. He could see her chest and shoulders rising and falling. He watched dully. It was still too far from him, too remote and lost in the past to be potent. Except, perhaps, the golden arms.
But even those did not really bring him out of his lethargy. This, what he saw before him, had been passed through already, far back and long ago. He did not go over the same motions again and again with a woman. There was only one time when a man could look at a given woman for the first, original time, newly, freshly, seeing her particular shoulders and back as different from all other shoulders and backs, her hair as softer and sweeter than all other hair. And that was four years behind him, with this woman.
She was attractive; there was no doubt of that. But it was not the same as seeing her as something that lay ahead of him. She lay in the past—the pun was unconscious, but he smiled at it—and that was a fact which could not be overlooked.
He thought of the week, perhaps more, they would be spending, the three of them, before the yuks came and they returned to the United States. One week, seven days at the very least, sitting and lying, frittering and fretting, picking at food, bored and restless, waiting, watching, cursing because the sun was too hot, the fog too gloomy and cold. Like a man in a shower bath, spinning the knobs first one way, then another. Never satisfied.
Right now, the hot was turned too far up. But night time it would be the other way around. But either way, they were not going to like it. Carl, perhaps. But not either of them. What Carl did and thought was another matter. But Carl was not being considered. For them, for himself and for Barbara, things were not going to be right, not until they had got away, gone each along his own particular path, by himself. As long as they were together there was going to be friction. It was a question of how much. And the heat didn’t help.
“Maybe I should open the door,” Barbara said, all at once.
Verne started. It was uncanny, the way her thoughts paralleled his! He didn’t like it. They had come too close in their life-views, their Weltanschauungs, much too close for comfort. Once, they had been far apart. But now they were thinking much along the same lines.
“Why the door?” Verne asked.
“Air comes in from the hall.” She got to her feet and opened the door. Air came in, but it was warm
and dry, no better than what they already had. It smelled of people coming from the bathroom, coming and going, endless times.
“Fine,” Verne muttered. “Just right.”
“Anyhow, it’s not so stuffy. There’s a current going out the window, through the room.”
But Verne was not happy. He was restless and uncomfortable. He stirred fretfully. His skin felt prickly, a revolting sensation, damp, prickly skin.
“Is there a shower in this building? There must be.”
“Just tubs.”
Sadness and angry despair settled over Verne. His face darkened; his whole body seemed to curl up into a scowl. Barbara watched curiously, her arms folded.
“What’s wrong?”
“No shower.”
Barbara continued to study him, her face showing no emotion. “Here,” she said suddenly. “I’ll take pity on you.” She picked up her suitcase from the floor and put it on the bed. She unsnapped it and brought out a bottle, carefully wrapped in a towel. Verne watched with interest as she removed the towel.
“I know that stuff,” he said, and the prickling and restlessness went away from him. “That’s the old doc’s magic snake oil, all right.”
“It sure is. And it’s the last I have.”
She took a plastic cup and went down the hall to the bathroom to fill it. She brought it back, carrying it carefully.
“Is it cold?” Verne asked.
“I let the tap run. It’s cool, I think.” She mixed whiskey into the cup, stirring it with the screwdriver. “I can’t find the spoon.”
“That’s all right. I’ve stirred it with a lot of different things, and it always tastes the same afterwards.”
“You first,” Barbara said.
He took the cup and drank deeply. It was good, warm though it was. Good? It did not taste good. No use to pretend that. He did not drink it because of its taste. He drank it for other reasons. He drank it because of the way it made him feel. And he was too old to spend time analyzing that any more.
He handed the cup back, smacking his lips.
“You didn’t leave much,” Barbara said, sipping at what was left. “It doesn’t matter. After all, you deserved something for all the work you did.”
“I consider myself repaid in full.”
The two of them sat for a while without speaking, Verne stretched out on the bed as best he could, Barbara sitting on the floor again, sipping at the cup.
It still seemed odd to Verne, but not as odd as it had. He was beginning to become used to seeing her again; it was regaining its naturalness. Now the other part, the four years of not seeing her, was starting to fade and seem unreal. The sight of the woman, sitting on the floor in her red shirt and dark slacks, was becoming an accepted event, almost partaking of the familiar. Like a habit which had been forgotten, it was all sweeping back on his again, after only a short reacquaintance; the groove was there, and it needed only to be filled.
Of course, what filled the void, the emptiness, the space, was not exactly congruent with its earlier manifestation. Four years had changed Barbara Mahler. Before, she had been an almost-grown child, on the verge of adulthood, womanhood. He had come along and plucked her, just as she was ripe. Well, perhaps still a little green, but edible for all that. She had been like a fruit that was still a trifle hard and sour; not too soft and easy. Now she had grown up. Now she had become the adult. She had ripened. But the image was lost: she was harder and more sour now than she been before.
The allusion did not work; she was not a plant. She had, perhaps, been like some green fruit then, hard with the chill bitterness of an unripe apple, a little hard New England apple. But her hardness now was not a green hardness. It was the hardness of white stone.
She was turning to stone. It was the calcification of rock, the fossilization, the early bitter taste of death and age. The coldness of the tomb. The breath, the frightening breath of the dead. He could feel it, in the small room. Almost a clammy thing; perspiration that had frozen on her body. She had become rock from deep inside, working out toward the surface. It did not show yet; her skin was smooth and golden, with millions of tiny hairs lying close against, but the hardness was there, down deep inside, and coming nearer and nearer to the surface.
Only the little drops of cold sweat on her neck, on her lip, told. And the moist, clammy tinge in the air. And her voice. The way she talked. That told, too. It came from far inside, from the central vaults and dark places, the very core of her body.
“Want more?” Barbara said, tapping the cup.
“More? No. Not now.”
He could understand this, what he saw. The cold wetness of death. He had a little of it, himself. Yes, he had it, too. Perhaps she had even got it from him. Perhaps it had come from him in the first place; and he, in his order, had got it from someone before. From Teddy. Or from one of the others. The girl, the girl in his room. The blue-eyed girl with hair like cornsilk. Perhaps it had come to him from her. She had burned him, scorched him, dried him out.
But it was different, with him. He smiled as he realized this. With him it was a sort of surface coating, a cold, sharp outer coat, a kind of hard shell, that had adhered to his skin. It was on the outside, and it was working in. His heart would freeze last. Hers had been first, the very opposite. And he would keep warming it, his heart, his whole body. The freeze would be slowed down, not stopped, but at least slowed…by what he had just now taken in. He could feel it; it was warm and good.
That was what he meant by good.
“God damn,” Barbara said suddenly.
“What’s the matter?”
“I’m getting like you, Verne. I feel as if my skin were rubbing against me. What’ll we do?”
“The heat.”
“As they always say. But what can we do?”
Verne reached down and patted her on the arm. “It’ll be cold tonight. Then you’ll wish it was warm.”
“It’s not so cold at night. I’m not bothered.”
“Maybe you’ve been sleeping better than I have.”
“I’m prettier than you.”
Verne smiled. “You are. I admit it.”
“Thank you.”
“No. Don’t thank me. You always were attractive, you know. I told you that. Once.”
“Let’s forget it.”
“It’s a fact.”
“Let’s forget it anyhow.”
“All right.” They became silent.
Barbara stirred finally. “You know,” she said thoughtfully, “when I first realized it was you who would be staying here I felt quite hostile to the idea.”
“Oh?”
“I had a very strong feeling when I came into the office and found it was you there. I almost tried to push back into one of the cars.”
“Why?”
“I don’t know. A general feeling. But you must know what it is. Your past is even longer than mine.”
“I guess I know what you mean.”
“It should turn out all right, though. We’re both grown people. Adults. If we act like adults and not skulk around like children—”
“Whatever adults means.”
She swung around to face him. She was serious. “I mean, there’s no reason why we can’t be polite to each other. Not start trading deep and subtle knives.”
“Do we do that?” Verne said feebly.
“No. I think that part will be all right. But it goes deeper than—than that, than talk.”
“Carl would be offended.”
“Doubtless. Well, let’s drop it.”
“I think things are working out. Don’t you?”
“Yes.” She was silent for a time. Suddenly she leaped up. “God, this heat! It really makes you want to jump around.”
“How about some more stuff?”
“Another drink? Do you want another?”
“I guess I could get it down.”
“All right.” She took the cup and disappeared down the hall with it.
“Is it c
old?” Verne said, when she returned.
“A little colder than before. It’s been running.”
He raised an eyebrow. “So? You are growing up.”
“I suppose.”
She poured the whiskey into the cup and stirred it. Verne drank first again, and then she drank, finishing what remained. He watched her. She was standing in front of him, very close. Her nose was a trifle large, her teeth somewhat crooked. But that was not noticeable unless she smiled. She had a good figure, although she had become a trifle heavy. All in all, she was in good physical condition. Suddenly she gave him the empty cup.
He handed the cup back. “Why give it to me? I looked in, and it’s empty.”
“Fill it.”
He got to his feet. “All right.” He went down the hall to the bathroom. The water was still running in the bowl. He filled the cup halfway. Then he poured part of the water out. He returned with what he had left in it.
“Thanks.” She put the cup down on the dresser. She was pacing around the room, her hands in her pockets.
“What’s wrong?”
She stopped pacing. “Verne, you have to admit that in a way—” She broke off.
“In a way what?”
“I mean, there are some things the same, and some that are not the same.”
“What things?”
“Let’s face it. Four years was a long time ago. We’ve both changed, especially me. There’s no chance in the world that we can have any kind of relationship again. I’m putting the cards on the table. That’s the way it should be. Let’s be honest. Nothing will work. Nothing at all. Like we had before or anything else.”
She glared at him hostilely.
“Isn’t that right?”
Verne smiled blandly. “I don’t know. This is the first time I’ve thought about it. It seems to be your idea.”
“That’s a lot of bilge. You’ve thought about it steadily for the last twenty-four hours. But too much has changed. We might as well face it and then forget it.”
“Well, we don’t have to fight.”
“No.” She nodded. “No, we don’t have to fight.”
“It’s too hot to fight.”
“Yes. It’s hot.” She sat down on the bed. “I’m sorry I shouted.” She looked steadily up at him. “You know, Verne, I was too young. You should have known it. You really grabbed it right off the tree.”