James Cain - The Magician's Wife

“I know Jake, of course. I’ll call him — and pay my bills, if you don’t mind. This one’s going to be big.”

“She... didn’t mean any harm! ”

“Of course not! Just her way of having fun!”

“Clay, please!”

“Grace, what did you come about?”

He had taken a seat on the sofa, the dry one with its back to the piano, and before answering, she came and sat beside him. Then she said: “I had to see you.”

“To bawl me out.”

“Yes.”

“O.K. Go ahead.”

“I can’t — not after that. ”

With a shudder, she motioned to the Orozco, and perhaps to ease things for her, he asked: “How’s my picture coming along?”

“Rather well, I think — it’s almost done now. I was having trouble with it — the eyes were slightly cold. They looked the way they do look when you have that stare on your face that you wear most of the time. I wanted that other look, that warm, interested look that you get when you want to be friendly. And it wouldn’t come. But then something happened, I don’t quite know what. The blade — on the face I’m using a knife — gave a flick, and there was one eye as I wanted it. Then the other one came — and I stopped. Except for some work on the hands, I’m done.”

“I’m certainly curious to see it.”

“What do I smell, Clay?”

“Ham. Want some?”

“I have to admit I didn’t have much supper.”

“I admit I didn’t get any. Come on.”

Huddled close at the dining-room table, she sipped white wine and wolfed down ham sandwiches. Presently her hand found his, and then suddenly gripped it. “Clay,” she whispered, “you’re going to ring her, aren’t you? And say — something nice to her?”

“You mean, now? ”

“She’s home. And she’s alone.”

“Answer: no, Grace. I’m through with her.”

“For me? I’m so frightened.”

“Not for anyone. What are you frightened about?”

“I don’t know. I keep telling myself about nothing! It doesn’t help — I keep right on having these crazy jitters... About her. About Alec. About Elly! About — everything! ”

“The electric chair is frightening.”

“No! Don’t talk like that!”

“It’s what you’re afraid of, though — have been all along. It’s why you came to me, in the hope I’d bust things up with this marriage she got herself into. Before things get out of hand. Do you know what started this thing? This brawl that we had tonight? It was because I was lousing her time schedule. She’s marking time, she says, until the old man dies — and I wanted action tonight. I made my same old pitch, that she go to Reno, have it done, and marry me! But first I wanted that both of us go to him, that husband, and lay it on the line, how things stood, so he’d know — because something happened, Grace, that made it out of the question that things could go on as before, in secret .” For the first time, then, he told of the afternoon’s episode: “a damned unpleasant occurrence, and it opened my eyes to some things. The first was I don’t blame her for all that’s happened. That guy’s an ugly customer and on top of that a fool. The second was — that fool, dunce, or jerk, I shook his hand. I made him my welcome guest, and that made it a new deal. Things can’t go on as they were. But she, do you think she got the point? She just stared at me, as though I was some kind of a nut. I got tired of listening to her and laid the law down, but good. I told her how it would be, that she was staying with me and we would go on from there. We would start a new life, I said, and opened some wine to celebrate. She threw it in my face, broke the glass and cut my cheek, and wrecked my apartment for me. So if you think I’m calling her up, you just think again. I kicked her out, and she’s lucky a boot in the tail is all she got from me. I should have—”

He broke off, speechless with the rage that had repossessed him, then asked: “Isn’t that what you’ve wanted, Grace? Isn’t that what you’ve asked me to do? Isn’t it now? Isn’t it? ”

“Well, not quite in that tone of voice.”

“My tone of voice was fine. Answer.”

“Then, if you put it that way, I say yes.”

O.K. Now! Let’s us go on from here.”

“Meaning?”

“The same old thing I’ve meant with you from the start. Let’s us begin ‘going steady,’ as the high-school kids call it.”

“Clay, that’s out of the question.”

“You mean, you have to be loyal to her?”

“That, partly, of course.”

“If she’s out, what point does loyalty have?”

“ You’re not out, though.”

She put out a hand, touched his bare neck, impulsively pulled him to her. “I own up,” she said, “there’s nothing I’d like better than to ‘go steady’ with you. Those weeks you sat for me — I made them last and last and last, I loved them so. And then the other night, when your eyes spoke to me, when I made them come alive, I knew the truth at last. But my love, Clay, isn’t only desire. It can face sacrifice too — must face it if it’s anything at all. And you’ve betrayed, with every word, how you feel about her — as she betrayed, when she came to me tonight, how she feels about you! ”

“How she feels about losing her cat’s-paw!”

“How she feels about — what?”

“You know what I mean, stop ‘whatting’ me. I’m sure she raged like a tiger, but it wasn’t love, my sweet. She’s not capable of it! She’s—”

“ She is, she is, she is! ”

“I interrupted. I’m sorry. Go on.”

“Whatever she’s capable of, you’re in this, Clay!”

“I was in it — not any more!”

“You’re both in it!”

Both were panting as her chair inched closer and closer and her grip on his neck tightened. Then: “Clay,” she whispered, “do you want to go on this way? The two of you fighting each other? With only one possible way for the whole thing to come out? It’s not whether you make up! It’s just a question of when! So why not do it tonight? Before you destroy each other, from pure, childish spite... Well, maybe not you. You’re not vindictive, that I must say, my own wonderful Clay. But she is — she can’t help it. That’s how she was born, it’s how she’s going to die. If you won’t destroy her, she’ll surely destroy you, and that’s the point it has, my loyalty to you! Clay, don’t let it happen! Call her up, make a little gag, ask if it’s turning blue, your heel mark on her bottom! So life can go on! So—”

“Behind his back, you mean?”

“Listen! That part can be straightened out!”

“With a blackjack it certainly can be!”

“Stop talking like that!”

“I’m talking like it is — what she’s talking about!”

“I want to finish!”

“O.K. then, Grace — finish.”

“Do you want to be ground to a pulp? Reduced to a nothing? Tortured so you won’t even know your own name? So you can’t think? We don’t speak of selling meat—!”

“Oh, now I get it at last.”

“Well, it’s about time!”

He got up, put the ham away, washed their dishes, then went over to her and raised her face to his. “My sweet,” he said, “my own beautiful Grace, that’s one thing you don’t have to worry about! ”

“I rather imagine I do.”

“I think we’re going to be married.”

“I can’t even — hear what you said, Clay!”

“You did hear.”

He had her wait while he went to the bedroom and dressed, then walked her home, through a night even more fragrant, beblossomed, and mad than the first night they had had, had been. “We’re going to be married,” he said, “whether you like it or not. But to prove I’m free to be married, that my soul isn’t chained any more — I have to sell meat, don’t I? Grace, it’s going to be sold, all right. It’s going to be sold right away, in a way it hasn’t been sold, ever, in this town. Do you know what you’ve done? You’ve made me over, Grace — rededicated me.”