Росс Макдональд - The Three Roads

A sudden four-o’clock chill drew off the strength of the sun and chased them back to the hotel. But after dinner they came back to the sea again, as if they both secretly recognized that it was the catalyst of their meeting. In the darkness under a palm tree by the public walk he kissed her for the first time, moving toward her with such violent suddenness that she felt waylaid. There was something pathetically arid about his kiss, as if the tropical sun had evaporated his vital juices, and he held her so briefly that she had no time to respond.

The physical inadequacy of his kiss didn’t really matter. Already a new element had precipitated from her contact with him in the presence of the sea. The sound of the surf was full of echoes, and the night was larger than it had ever been.

Because he had come from a great distance, from an unimaginable place where planes flew up from carrier decks and combat communications got locomotor ataxia, she had a vivid sense that the ocean stretched far beyond the limit of her vision, curving downward in darkness below the uncertain horizon to military islands and contested waters where the war was being fought. She was invaded by a consciousness that never withdrew again – that she was standing on the edge of a dim infinity from which anything might emerge to meet her: grief, or ecstasy, or death. And she had experienced the three of them.

Theodore Klifter watched her as she talked, occasionally stroking his reassuring beard. He had grown this beard involuntarily during a period when he had had no access to shaving materials – it hurt his S.S. guards in their professional feelings when their prospective victims cut their own throats – and he had retained it as a protection for the lower half of his face. The upper half of his face was shielded by thick spectacles that enlarged her image and blurred it slightly, as if there were a wall of glass between them.

The admiration he felt for Paula was not wholly uncritical, though he knew that he made special allowances for tall women who had long brown hair, like the hair his mother had allowed him to brush for her in the evenings when he was a child. Paula was not extraordinarily intelligent, as he preferred women to be, and there was a harsh and irritating contrast between the hard surface of her conversation and the strong vein of emotional femininity in her nature. But she was honest and self-aware. She knew what she wanted and had the stability to wait for it. She was capable of sustaining a grand passion without lapses into moral triviality, and without romantic solemnity. Though other people’s lovers were his life’s most hackneyed theme, he couldn’t help being interested in the man who had won such a love from such a woman.

Her quiet face showed traces of the hard day she had had, but she had plunged into her story as soon as she was seated in his living-room with a drink. He let her talk, for he understood that she had wound up her courage to this point, and was unwilling to give it time to run down.

“You already know, don’t you, that he had a severe shock last April when his ship was bombed? It was one of the suicide planes that the Japanese used so much in the last months of the war. A great many of Bret’s shipmates were killed, and he himself was rather badly burned and thrown into the water. He was picked up by a crash boat and flown to Guam. He recuperated in the naval hospital there. I didn’t know anything about this at the time, but his wife did.

“When he’d been on Guam about four weeks the hospital authorities decided that he was fit to fly home for survivor’s leave. His burns were healed, and he showed no signs of a mental condition, at least none appeared in his medical record. He landed at San Francisco after an overnight hop from Hawaii, and after some red tape and delay he caught a train for Los Angeles. He got home about nine thirty at night, but his wife wasn’t there.”

“Where was she?”

“She was downtown in a bar. The bartender knew her slightly and told the police next day that she had been there. She didn’t know when Bret was coming, you see. He couldn’t be sure what day he’d catch a plane from Guam, and even if he had, he couldn’t have written her on account of the censorship. He should have wired her from San Francisco, but I guess he wanted to surprise her by dropping in out of the blue. Or perhaps he was suspicious of her. Anyway, she wasn’t home when he arrived. He was upset and lonely, so he phoned me. I was never so glad to hear from anyone in my life. I didn’t care, that night, whether he was married to another woman or not. I picked him up at his house, and we went for a drive.”

“How did he behave?”

“Correctly. Too damn correctly.”

“That’s not exactly what I mean–”

“I know it isn’t,” she said with a faint smile. “He seemed pretty much as he’d always been except that he was more silent. His manner to me was distant, so much so that I wondered why he’d bothered to call me. He wouldn’t talk about his experiences or about the bombing. All I could get out of him was a sort of communiqué. He couldn’t conceal his worry about his wife. I drove out Sunset and out the highway toward Malibu, but it wasn’t more than an hour before he asked me to take him home again.”

“He was eager to see her, then?”

“Yes. I noticed his nervousness, and that may account for it. Of course you’d expect him to be nervous after what he’d gone through. He was thinner than he’d ever been, and he’d never had any excess flesh. He was quite jumpy by the time we got back to his house, and for some reason he asked me to come in with him. I wasn’t crazy about the idea of witnessing his meeting with his wife, but he insisted for some reason. I think he wanted to be honest with her, not to deceive her even about a little thing like a car ride. So in I went.” She took a long swallow of whisky and soda. The doctor observed that her hand was clenched white around the glass.

“The light was on in the front bedroom – it hadn’t been when I called for him – and he opened the door and walked in. I heard him say her name, Lorraine, and then a thud as he collapsed on the floor. I followed him in and saw her lying on the bed naked on top of the bedclothes. She had an enviable figure even in death, but her face was ugly because she had been strangled. I went to the phone and called the police. Then I went back to the bedroom and found that Bret was still unconscious on the floor. I tried to revive him but it didn’t do any good. He remained unconscious all night and most of the next day. When the police arrived they found a rolled prophylactic tube on the table beside Lorraine’s bed, and other evidence that a man had been with her. The man who murdered her has never been caught.”

She was breathing quickly, and the blood had withdrawn from her face, leaving fever spots of rouge on each cheekbone. She raised her glass and finished its contents. “May I have another drink, Dr. Klifter? I didn’t realize it would take so much out of me to tell you that.” She handed him her empty glass.

When he came back from the kitchen with a strong drink for her and a weaker one for himself, she was standing by the window looking out. Her tailored back was tense and straight in the attitude of listening. Even when she disregarded him she disturbed him, not entirely because she was tall and brown-haired and well made. She was one of the women who without relinquishing their female quality had entered into man’s estate. Her body was as streamlined as a projectile, potent as a weapon, but she did not use it to advance her interests or excuse her errors. Europe had had its share of women who lived their own lives and asked for no quarter, but they were the exception rather than the rule. In Los Angeles there were scores of thousands of such women living boldly by their wits, self-contained and energetic atoms in a chaotic society.