Ross MacDonald - The Ferguson Affair

I tiptoed into the kitchen, turned on the fluorescent light over the stove, and peered into the oven. It was still warm, though the gas had been turned off. My dinner was there, in a pyrex dish with a cover. I ate it off the sinkboard, standing up. The china clock looked down at me from the wall, pointing its hands accusingly at twelve midnight.

I heard Sally’s slippered feet cross the living room.

“So you finally decided to come home,” she said from the doorway.

“Wait. The condemned man has the right to a last meal. It’s not precisely a legal right, perhaps, but it’s recognized by long tradition.” I put another piece of lamb in my mouth and smiled at her, munching.

She didn’t smile back. “I hope it chokes you.”

“On the contrary, it’s delicious.”

“You are a liar, Bill Gunnarson. It’s dry as a bone. I can actually hear it crunching. And after all the trouble I went to with that dinner. Honestly, if I wasn’t so mad, I could cry.”

“I’m sorry. It really is delicious, though. Have a slice.”

“I couldn’t possibly eat anything,” she said distantly. “Don’t worry. I’ve had my dinner. I waited until after nine o’clock, and then I broke down and ate by myself. While you were out rampaging.”

“Rampaging isn’t exactly the word.”

“Give me a better one.”

“Moiling and toiling. Chasing the buck. Seeking the bubble reputation.”

“Please don’t try to be amusing. You’re about as funny as a crutch.”

This stung me to retort that she could carry on for both of us in the wit department, what with her brilliant similes like the one about the crutch. I requested her permission to quote it to friends.

She gave me a glazed and shiny look which reminded me of the china clock on the wall. “Maybe I can’t compete with movie actresses. I’m getting big and fat and physically repugnant. It’s no wonder you go off rampaging and leave me in the lurch.”

“You’re not fat and repugnant. I wasn’t rampaging. I’ve never met a movie actress in my life. I didn’t leave you in the lurch.”

“It felt like the lurch to me. You didn’t even telephone.”

“I know. I tried, but things kept getting in the way.”

“What sort of things?”

“Things and people,” I said vaguely.

“What people? Who were you with?”

“Wait a minute, Sally. We don’t ask that question, remember?”

“I always tell you where I go, and who with, and everything.”

“If I told you, I’d be a lousy lawyer.”

“You can’t use your profession to cover up every time.”

“Cover up what?”

“Your failure as a husband,” she said shinily. “When a man deliberately avoids his own home the way you do, it’s easy enough to understand what it means. You’re essentially unmarried-a perennial bachelor. You don’t want the responsibility of a wife and family. No wonder you get fixated on your clients. It’s a safe relationship, an ego-feeding activity, which makes no demands on your essential self.”

“That’s quite a mouthful,” I said. “What have you been reading?”

“I am perfectly capable of observing the state of my own marriage and drawing the necessary conclusions. This marriage is in grave danger, Bill.”

“Are you serious?”

“I have never been more serious in my life. Do you know what you are, Bill Gunnarson? You’re nothing but a profession that walks like a man. When I tried to tell you on the phone about my good report from Dr. Trench, you weren’t even interested. You don’t even care about Bill Gunnarson, Jr.”

“I care about him very much.”

“You may think you do, but you don’t. You spend days and weeks of your good time trying to save criminals from going to jail where they belong. But when I tell you that Bill Gunnarson, Jr., is going to have to have a room of his own, you fob me off with empty promises.”

“My promises are not empty. I told you we’re going to find a bigger place, and we’re going to.”

“When? After all the burglars and murderers are taken care of? When Bill Gunnarson, Jr., is an old man with a long gray beard?”

“For God’s sake, Sally, he isn’t even born yet.”

“How dare you swear at me?”

She looked around her kitchen as if for the last time. Her glance went over my head, parting my hair like a stainless steel comb. She turned grandly and went out. Her hip bumped the door frame.

I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. I wolfed the rest of my dinner, masticating it thoroughly. It was a good excuse for grinding my teeth.

Ten minutes later, after a hot shower not followed by a cold one, I climbed into bed behind her. Sally lay with her face to the wall. I put my hand in the soft fold of her waist. She pretended to be dead.

I pushed my hand farther around her. Her skin was as smooth as milk. “I’m sorry, I should have phoned you. I got carried away by the case.”

“It must be some case,” she answered after a while. “I was worried about you. The murder was in the paper. So I thought I’d calm myself down by reading that book on Successful Marriage-the one that Mother sent me. There’s a chapter in it that was very upsetting.”

“About perennial bachelors?”

She snorted slightly. “You’re not a perennial bachelor, are you, Bill? You want to be married to me and everything?”

“And everything.”

She turned toward me, but not all the way around. “I know, there hasn’t been much everything lately.”

“I can wait for everything.”

“And you don’t mind? The book says this is a bad time for men, because they’re so passionate. Is it a bad time for you?”

“It’s a wonderful time.” I slid my hand down her belly. She was radiant even in darkness.

“Ouch,” she said.

“Ouch what?”

“Feel.”

She moved my hand, and I could feel him kicking. He might turn out to be a her, of course, but the kicks felt like masculine kicks to me.

Sally’s breathing slowed down into sleep. I turned over to go to sleep myself. The telephone rang like an alarm set off by my movement. I levitated, dropped to the floor running on tiptoe, and got to the damn thing before it could ring again.

A muffled voice said: “Is that Gunnarson? William Gunnarson the lawyer?”

“This is Gunnarson, and I’m an attorney.”

“You want to go on being one?”

“I don’t understand you.”

But I understood. There was a threat in the words, underlined by soft menace in the voice. I thought it was the same man who had called Ferguson, but I couldn’t be sure. The voice was blurred, as though the man at the other end of the line was talking through a mask. “You want to go on living, don’t you, Gunnarson?”

“Who is this?”

“Just a well-wisher.” He snickered. “If you do want to go on living, you better drop the case you’re on, and I mean any part of it.”

“Go to hell.”

“You better give that some thought. You have a wife, I hear, and I hear she’s pregnant. You wouldn’t want her to take a bad fall or anything. So forget about Holly May and her little friends. You got that, Mr. Gunnarson?”

I didn’t answer. The anger in my head was like scalding ice. I slammed the receiver down. The fraction of a second later I regretted the action, and picked it up again. There was nothing to be heard but the dial tone, the voice of idiot space. I laid the receiver down for the second time, more gently.

But the bedroom light was on, and Sally was standing at the bedroom door.

“What on earth was that, Bill?”

I tried to recall the exact words I had spoken. I’d said too much to pretend that it was a wrong number.

“Some drunk. He seems to have a grudge against someone.”