Маргарет Миллар - Vanish in an Instant

The old lady’s eyes flickered. “Why, I wouldn’t dream of going out on a night like this.”

“Promise.”

“It never even occurred to me to go out on a night like this. As a matter of fact, I was about to retire when I decided to try on my new clothes.”

“It’s a pretty dress.”

“You really like it? It doesn’t fit, but then I didn’t buy it for fit . I bought it,” she added in a very reasonable tone of voice, “for the color. It’s such a cheerful color it makes me feel alive.”

“Ella can maybe take it in at the seams for you.”

She stared at him coldly. “Then you don’t really like it, after all.”

“Yes, I do. I was only...”

“You have no right to force your way into my home and inflict your opinions about clothes on me, Mr. Garino.”

“You’d better go to bed before...” Garino hesitated, looking down at his hands.

“Before what , Mr. Garino?”

“Before Ella has to put you to bed.”

She thought this over quietly for a moment. Then she said with an air of triumph, “I can’t go to bed. I’ve got company.” She pointed the cigarette holder at Meecham. The cigarette had burned down to the end and gone out. “Who are you, company?”

Meecham repeated his name.

“Well, sit down, sit down some place and we’ll all have a cozy drink together. You too, Victor.”

“No, I don’t want one, thank you,” Garino said.

“You needn’t pretend, in front of me, that you don’t drink. I happen to know that you drink in secret all the time. A lot of people do. Billions. Pour some of us billions a drink, Victor.”

Garino’s dark skin showed an angry streak of purple across his cheekbones and the bridge of his nose. “You can wait for a while.”

“I can’t wait. I need the energy. Whisky is a body fuel. I read that in the newspaper. There’s no reason why I can’t have some body fuel.”

“You intend to go out, don’t you?” Garino said. “You weren’t trying on clothes.”

“Why, of all the absurb ideas!”

“Where were you going?”

“Give me a drink.”

“Where were you going?”

“You dirty foreigner.”

Garino’s eyes glittered like an oil sludge over moving water. “Watch what you say. I am your only friend.”

“Oh no, you’re not. I have lots of friends.”

Meecham sat down facing her. The scarred and rickety coffee table seemed like a precarious bridge between them that must be crossed carefully, one step at a time.

“Who are they?” he said.

“Who are they is none of your business. I don’t go around to other people saying who are they, who are they all the time.”

“Did your friends give you any money?”

She raised her head high and tried to look haughty. “I wouldn’t dream of accepting charity. I’m a woman of independent means.”

“I realize that, of course,” Meecham said. “But you wouldn’t have any objection to accepting money that came from Earl. It did come from Earl?”

“Don’t bother me. I’m tired. I need some body fuel.”

“All right.” Meecham nodded at Garino, and Garino went, silent and tight-lipped, into the kitchen. When he returned he was carrying a plastic tumbler filled to the brim with whisky.

Mrs. Loftus drank it in three gulps. “That newspaper was right. It is a fuel. Why, I feel warmer already.”

Meecham said, “Earl is dead, Mrs. Loftus.”

The old lady began to tremble, and Meecham thought for a moment that she was going to react violently to the news. But too many nerves of communication had been cut between her and the outside world. Pain was dulled and pleasure remote.

“Did you hear me, Mrs. Loftus?”

“I don’t want to hear anything. You leave me alone.”

“Before he died he had over six thousand dollars,” Meecham said. “How much of that did you get?”

“I’ve forgotten his face. He was nice-looking, but I’ve forgotten ... I can’t picture it.”

“Who sent money to you? Or brought it to you?”

Though her mouth worked, she didn’t speak for a moment, and when she did it wasn’t an answer to Meecham’s questions but to questions that rose within her like smoke from a forgotten fire. “Such a hard life, a terrible life. Earl is lucky. I wasn’t a good mother to him. Something happened to me. What was it? I don’t remember. Something happened. I think I was ill and too tired to care.”

Meecham recalled the piercing words Loftus had used about her: One drink and she was a drunk. She’d been a drunk for thirty years and didn’t find it out until then. For her the world vanished in that instant. She has never seen it since. She never will again.

“Earl didn’t understand,” she said in a whisper. “He wrote cruel things to me sometimes, said I broke my promises, said I didn’t try hard enough. I burned all his letters. Birdie told me to.”

“Who told you?”

“Birdie did. Tonight. I was sitting here and suddenly in comes Birdie through that door like a ghost.” She glanced at the locked door expectantly as if she wanted to conjure up the ghost again, a friendly ghost more real than the shadows she lived among.

“Please, Mrs. Loftus,” Meecham said sharply. “Take it easy now. Tell me...”

“Forget the past, Birdie said, burn it all up. And she’s right. From now on things are going to be different. I’m going away, I’m going to start a new life. Birdie says it’s bad for me living here like this from hand to mouth in a town full of gossip.” Birdie said and Birdie says ... The words seemed to hypnotize her like a new religion with a special chant. “Birdie says I ought to live in the country, in a big house with lots of trees and flowers around and dogs in the yard.”

Meecham leaned toward her across the table trying to focus her attention. “Birdie was here tonight?”

“I don’t think I’m supposed to tell you that. She doesn’t want Victor to know, doesn’t like people who snoop.”

“I’m not snooping. But you must be making a mistake, Mrs. Loftus. It couldn’t have been Birdie.”

“I know Birdie. I recognized her right off, she didn’t have to open her mouth.”

“Earl claimed she was killed in an accident out West.”

She didn’t seem surprised. “Sometimes Earl told little fibs.”

“This was more than a little fib. If he lied about her death, it means that he was deliberately trying to prevent anyone from finding her.”

“Well, I found her without even looking. She’s alive, all right. Showing her age, I must say,” Mrs. Loftus added slyly. “Oh, yes, she’s gotten older. And she’s had a few knocks in the process, so now she understands better about other people with troubles, like me. She’s different, Birdie is. She says I’m different too.” She tilted her head at Garino. “You think I am, Victor?”

“Ah — yes.” Garino looked sick. “Very different.”

“You don’t mean that nice , do you?” she said slowly.

“I mean it nice.”

“At least I haven’t gotten stout. So many older women get stout.”

Not without food, Meecham thought. “Birdie gave you money?”

“She sent it to me. It came this morning in the mail, a check with a little note. Two hundred dollars.”

“And then?”

“Then what ? I spent it, of course.”

“All of it?”

“Not all of it,” she said disdainfully. “I’m not a fool. I have twelve dollars left.”

“How far do you think twelve dollars will go toward that big house in the country?”

“Birdie says I’m not to worry. She’s taking care of everything; Earl asked her to. She knows where the house is. She’s going to drive me there tonight. It might be quite a long drive. If I could have another drink, Victor?”