William McGivern - Very Cold for May

May raised her hand imperiously as Denise got to her feet, trembling with anger. “Don’t lose control of yourself,” she said coolly. “I am writing a book which interests me and which will be finished quite soon. It’s a work of art quite outside your comprehensions, which are limited to eating, sleeping and lusting, I presume. The fact that your husband is an integral piece in the mosaic I am doing is unfortunate. For you, that is.”

“Just a minute,” Brian said, gently. He patted Denise’s shoulder in a soothing gesture before turning to May. “I love all this fine rhetoric,” he said, “but I don’t believe in it. I never heard a writer talk about an ‘integral piece in his mosaics.’ You’re not kidding me, May.”

“Oh, Lord!” May said, with mock despair. “Now the sophomores have figured me out, Jake.”

“I’m no sophomore,” Brian said, still smiling. “I’ve been through a big war, and I’ve seen girls with their clothes off, and I’ve filled an inside straight flush. But that’s beside the point. I think you should stop acting and listen to my proposition.”

May lit a cigarette with an annoyed gesture, then sat on the couch and slumped back against the cushions. Letting the cigarette dangle from her lips she put her feet up on the coffee table and looked at Denise and Brian through the curling smoke.

“Please go home,” she said. “Say that wonderful word ‘goodbye’ and get the hell out of here.”

“Let’s go,” Brian said shortly.

Denise glared down at May and there was naked hatred in her face. “You’ll regret this, you bitch,” she said.

“Goodbye, my dear,” May said, languidly. “And by the way, ask Danny sometime about that girl in Amarillo. She was a Minsky grad, too. Maybe you knew each other.”

Denise walked out of the room and Brian, after an amused salute to May, followed her. Jake smoked in silence until he heard the front door close. Then he said, “You were in good form. All part of your unpopularity program, I take it?”

“I don’t know what the hell it’s part of,” May said in a musing voice. She lifted one leg about a foot above the coffee table and turned her neatly shod foot about in a slow circle. “That’s a very good ankle, if I say so myself,” she said.

Jake stood and glanced at his watch. “I’ve got to run along, May.”

May came to the front door with him, and the maid brought his hat and gloves. Jake opened the door and in the bright sudden light he saw that May looked tired and old. She stepped away from the sun and put a hand to her face.

“You look tired,” he said.

“You look like a Dachau escape yourself,” she said sharply.

“Oh, come off it. Get some rest and you’ll be all right. And one other thing. Take care of yourself, will you? Do you have anyone here with you at night?”

“No, the maid leaves after dinner. Mrs. Swenson comes in at six or seven in the morning.”

“Why don’t you ask her to sleep in?”

“Because I don’t want anyone in the house when I’m working. I don’t like people tiptoeing around and eavesdropping.” She gave him a little push toward the door. “Come on. Don’t hang around on the slim chance that a good exit line will occur to you.”

Jake grinned and patted her shoulder. She smiled at him as he went down the steps and when he reached the sidewalk he turned and they waved to each other.

That afternoon Jake tried to get some work done on an industrial account the agency had got recently. The company, which was having union trouble, wanted a brochure for distribution to its retailers which would puff its products while implying that such achievements could be made only in an open shop.

It was very dull, and Jake found his thoughts wandering time and again to May, and the trouble she represented for him, and the people she intended to write about.

He had a hunch why she was planning to write the book. She needed attention and she was trying desperately to get it. Through a combination of factors she had lost the excitement and limelight after the war. Her friends were scattered, she was alone. May was no longer the radiant, compelling woman she had once been; in the cheerful pastel lighting of her home she was still lovely, but the reckless, untended beauty had gone. That beauty had been a magnet and people had forgiven May a great deal because of it.

Her tragedy was that she couldn’t change her values, or accept the change in herself. She was growing old and felt she was being shunted aside. That, he guessed, accounted for her touchiness about why she was writing the book. She was ashamed of what she was doing, and why she was doing it.

The pettiness of May’s motivation didn’t surprise Jake, because he had long ago decided that many of the lovely or ugly things men did had their origin in incongruously mean causes. Men fashioned towering philosophies to justify what ignorant nurses had told them as children, and great books and plays had been written because the authors hadn’t made athletic teams or had acne. These insignificant irritants worked on the human soul like a grain of sand in a bivalve, and the results were things of great beauty or terror.

Jake thought about it that afternoon and got very little work done. He called Sheila at six to ask her to have dinner with him, but she had a date. He dined alone and returned to his club about eight thirty, where he read several current magazines before showering and going to bed.

That was at one thirty.

The phone waked him the next morning. He put it against his ear without raising his head from the pillow. “Yes?”

“Jake?” It was Gary Noble’s voice, oddly strained. “Jake, May was killed last night... Can you hear me?”

“Oh, God,” Jake said. He swung his feet from under the covers and came up to a sitting position, fully awake. “What happened?”

“She was killed — in her home early this morning. Jake, what the devil will this mean to us?”

Jake glanced at his bedside clock. Seven thirty. He lit a cigarette. He was conscious of not thinking clearly, or rather, of not thinking at all.

“Jake?”

“I’m still here,” Jake said. “How did you find out?”

“It was on the seven o’clock broadcast. Jake, you’d better run out to her place and see what the police are thinking.”

“Okay,” Jake said.

“And Jake. Don’t mention anything about Riordan and May to the police.”

“Oh, for God’s sake,” Jake said.

“I’m just reminding you.”

“Okay, I’ll meet you in the office later.”

From Jake’s club on Michigan Boulevard to May’s apartment was a ten minute cab ride. When he arrived he saw a small group of men and women on the sidewalk, and two police cars parked before her home. The whispering crowd regarded Jake with speculative curiosity as he went up the stone steps to where a uniformed policeman was on guard at the door.

“Hold it,” the patrolman said.

“Who’s here from Homicide?” Jake asked.

“Lieutenant Martin.”

“Would you tell him Jake Harrison would like to see him? I think it will be okay.”

The policeman shrugged but went inside. Returning a few seconds later he gave Jake a look of grudging respect. “Go on in,” he said.

Lieutenant Martin was standing alone in the foyer. He smiled at Jake and they shook hands.

“What brings you here?” Martin said.

“Nothing, but May was a friend of mine. What happened?”

Lieutenant Martin rested an elbow against the curved bannister and rubbed his chin.

“She was killed sometime this morning, around four, if you want a guess. That’s about all we know.”

Jake realized as he listened to Martin’s flat casual voice, that subconsciously he hadn’t believed Noble; he hadn’t believed that May was dead. Now he felt the shock of Martin’s cold and final words as if he were receiving the news for the first time.