Росс Макдональд - The Three Roads

She swung so wide at the corner that she nearly struck a car going in the opposite direction. He had to remind her again to stop at the tailor’s.

As he took off Harry Milne’s clothes behind the faded green curtain at the back of the steamy shop, he wondered why Paula had called him Miles, and why she was acting so strangely. He folded the gabardine slacks over a wire hanger and draped the camel’s hair coat over them. When he had put on his pressed and mended uniform, his eyes lingered for a moment on the glad rags he had discarded. In the dim light of the ceiling bulb there was something eerie about the empty coat, like a deflated and truncated man hanging against the wall. His imagination stirred to life and added a face to the man. Milne (or Miles?) had light hair and was handsome enough in a way. Milne had a bit of a tin ear, and that meant a background of fighting. Milne was a big man about his own size. Beyond that, Milne had shown an unexplained interest in him. Was it because Milne knew he was Lorraine’s husband?

He rushed past the bowed little man at the pressing machine and out of the shop so fast that Mac had to follow him into the street to collect his money.

“Sorry, I’m in a hurry,” he said, and overpaid the man a dollar. Mac was unimpressed. He shuffled back into his shop, muttering resentfully to himself.

“A hurry about what?” Paula said when Bret climbed into the car. “And where’s your hat? Remember the time on the beach the commander reprimanded you for taking off your hat?”

There was more tension in her voice than the harmless reminiscence warranted, and he felt that she was trying to throw him off the track. The memory of their first weeks together, La Jolla and the bright nostalgia of love pulled at his mind, but he shook them off.

“My hat’s still back in Milne’s apartment. Drive around the block, will you, Paula?”

“I thought we were going home.”

“Not yet.”

“Don’t go back there, Bret. I don’t like that man. I don’t trust him.”

“I don’t trust him with my hat.”

“But you’ve got another in your luggage, haven’t you? Or you can buy one.”

“I want that particular hat. Among other things.”

“Other things?” Her hands were tight on the wheel, though she still hadn’t started the engine.

He knew that she guessed his intention. Through some obscure feminine channel she had reached the conclusion that he suspected Milne, or Miles (it wasn’t surprising that a murderer should use an alias). He knew too that she dreaded another meeting between them. But it would only start another argument if he brought the conflict into the open.

“My black tie,” he said. “He’s still got that too.”

She refused to accept his superficial version of the situation. “You mustn’t go back there, Bret. I forbid you to go back.”

A vein of anger swelled in his head. “ ‘Forbid’ is a strange word to use. It hasn’t become part of your official vocabulary yet.”

She looked at him blankly as if her mind was elsewhere, occupied with an internal pain or a remote disaster. The first time he had spoken to her at Bill Levy’s party she had seemed like an old friend. Now he saw her as a stranger. Her brown hair was too neatly arranged under her vivid hat. There were tiny dry lines in her forehead and at the corners of her swollen eyelids. Her orange lipstick was unnaturally bright against her pale skin, and so heavily applied that it seemed to weigh down her mouth.

“Still, I forbid you,” she said.

“That’s unfortunate.” His own face felt stiff and dry. There was a knot of pain behind his eyes, a focus of anger and desolation. He put his hand on the door handle and pressed it down.

“Wait,” she said sharply. “You’ve done enough to spoil my life. I’m not going to let you do more if I can help it.”

He stayed where he was, shocked and outraged by her frankness, which struck him like a blow below the belt.

“You may not feel that you owe me anything–”

“I know I do,” he said, but she didn’t pause in her furious speech.

“I feel that you do. You’ve given me damn little to go on, and I’ve been as faithful to you as a wife could be. Do you understand that I’ve lived by you from the first day? I’ve worked for our future together, and I’ve suffered for it. I have the right ask you to stay in this car and come home with me.”

“But why?”

“I can’t tell you why.”

“Then I have the right to refuse. I know what I owe you, but it doesn’t mean that you can give me orders. I have other debts to pay, and I’ve got to pay them in my own way.” He knew that what he was saying was melodramatic and unfair, but he was beyond caring. His brain was ice cold and boiling at the same time, like a cup of liquid air.

“Is your dead wife more important than our future?”

Her voice was weary and defeated, as if her subterranean thought had gone to the conclusion beyond the spate of words. Still, she had to finish the dialogue. Every scene had to have its dialogue, even if weeping, screaming, beating her fists on the windshield and on the hard man’s face beside her would have been a truer expression of her feelings.

He too had said it all before, and said it again: “My future won’t begin until I’ve licked the past.”

“You can’t lick the past. It’s done. It’s finished.”

“I’m licking it now.”

She essayed an ironic laugh that came out as a screechy titter. “You’re knocking yourself out, you mean, and for no good reason. For God’s sake, and mine and your own, let me drive you home with me.”

“I can’t. If you don’t see that, there must be very little about me that you do see.”

“I love you, Bret. Does that mean anything to you?”

“Love can be mistaken.”

“Are you ready to call it off then?”

“Not unless you force me to. I do know that we can’t set up housekeeping in an open grave.”

“Words! You can twist words any way you like, but I thought the thing we had was stronger than rhetoric. I thought you loved me. If you don’t I’m not interested in trying to force anything. Do you love me?”

A moment before, her face had been the face of a stranger, an unknown, harried woman in whose car he happened incongruously to be sitting, arguing for the right to master his difficult life. He looked into her face again and saw that it was his lover’s, familiar and dear in every line. He had loved her from the beginning and would never love anyone else. He was ashamed that she had had to ask him.

“I do love you,” he said. “But can’t you see there are things more important than love?”

“What things are more important than love?”

“Justice.”

“Justice! You think you can go and find justice like a lucky horseshoe? A four-leaf clover in a field? Look around you and tell me where you see justice, except in books and movies. Do you see the good people getting the breaks and the bad people getting the dirty end of the stick? The hell you do! There’s no Hays Office to censor life and make all come right in the end. Everybody has to make his own life turn out, and you know it. That’s all I’m arguing for, Bret, for you to keep your head out of trouble. You try to make things over, and you’ll only beat out your brains.” But before he answered she knew that her angry words were as ineffectual as she had said words were.

“You must think I’m pretty futile.” The irony he had intended was lost in his sense that he had spoken the truth. In self-distrust and confusion, still shaken by her statement that he might spoil her life, he clung to his stubborn will and the brittle mood that sustained it.

“I think you’re strong,” she said, “but you don’t know what you’re up against.”