Джон Макдональд - The Last One Left

“Olly, my darling, I have been sitting here waiting for you and trying to believe that what happened really happened. It all seems so fantastic and incredible. It was so — completely unplanned. When you woke up did it seem as unreal to you?”

“Yes. I guess it seemed that way to me too.”

“What is happening to us?”

“It — sort of just happened.”

She gave a sharp tug at his hands. “What’s the matter? Can’t you look at me? Can’t you say my name? Can’t you tell me how you feel?”

She saw him force himself to look into her eyes. His deep tan was suffused with the pink tinge of his blush. With his somewhat indistinct chin, and with those eyes set a little too closely, he looked at her fixedly with an expression of such wondrously enthralled goofiness, she came dangerously close to laughter. His adam’s apple slid up and down his throat as he swallowed. In a huskied and very uncertain voice he said, “I... love you, Crissy. I love you.”

It was what she wanted to hear him say, and it had come sooner than she had expected.

She leaned, lifted his right hand to her lips, kissed the heavy knuckles one by one, feeling him tremble. “I don’t know whether I love you, Olly. Love is a very precious thing. It is a lot more rare than people think. But when you find it, and it’s for real, it is worth the most terrible sacrifices. I don’t know if — if we’re strong enough.”

“Strong enough?” he asked, puzzled.

“If you think I’m going to keep us some kind of a state secret, dear, if I decide I do truly love you, then you are making a mistake about me. I am going to be proud of us. People are going to know about us. And they are going to say very cruel things. Are you strong enough for that? And for the pressure your family will put on you? We have to be so terribly sure, Oliver. After all, I’m twenty-eight years old, and I’ve been married. And widowed.”

“I’ll be twenty in July.”

“The world will say wicked things about us. And a lot of people will even laugh at us. That’s why we have to be so sure.”

She could sense that it alarmed him. Poor bunny. So many things to alarm him and fascinate him all of a sudden. In empathy her memory went all the way back to Phil Kerna, and the strangely dazed, swooning, hypnotic feeling she’d had after that first time with him, when after that night and day and following night in the Reno motel he had left her there alone and gone back to the poker table. Having been married to Johnny for a year had left her as innocent as a child in comparison with what Phil had been able to make her experience. Now it would be just the same with Olly Akard, who had come to her with only the experience of a couple of years of furtive intimacy with his little steady girl, Betty, had come to her with that curious conviction of the male of limited experience that his role was that of sole aggressor, full of determined anxiety to perform properly just as it was written in the books, and with the pitiful belief that the one small pleasure he had always achieved was all his body was capable of.

She knew how deeply he had been confused and frightened, first by her, and finally by the unexpected and wild and savage intensity of his own guided response. Curious guilts and shynesses made him feel very awkward to be with her in daylight, knowing she too remembered all the tumbled deliriums and grotesqueries of the unending night.

Though she knew she had brought him far enough for there to be little danger of his being frightened away now, she laughed softly and fondly, hitched herself closer to him, put one hand on his powerful shoulder, laid her right hand against his cheek and with her thumb stroked the furry sheen of his eyebrow.

“But no need to look so scared already, dear little bunny rabbit boy,” she said. “I won’t want to parade you on display until I am absolutely certain. And meanwhile we will be dreadful sneaky sneaks. Like the page sneaking into the quarters of the sexy old queen. My little maid is discreet. And this home of mine was designed to frustrate nosey people.”

He said with overly casual and clumsy curiosity, “I... I suppose that’s the way the Senator wanted it.”

She looked at him in blank astonishment. “I beg your pardon?”

“I mean — well, I guess he wouldn’t want people to know he was...”

She narrowed her eyes and firmed her lips. Then she got up quickly and strode away, whirled and pointed a finger at him. “See? See what they do? So that’s what they made of it, eh? My God! Really! And you had to find out if those dirty little fibs were true, didn’t you?” She moved closer. “I built this house to suit me! I built it with money from my husband’s estate. Ferris Fontaine was an old and dear friend. When he asked if he could use my home for little political meetings now and then, I was glad to say yes. I was honored! That’s the reward for friendship. My God, it’s really pathetic! What foul little minds people must have to really believe I was dear Fer’s mistress. A man so old! How could you believe it, Olly?”

“I didn’t,” he said earnestly. “Not really. Before I ever even met you, I didn’t believe it.”

She sat by him, smiled, patted his knee. “Thank you, dear. Let’s change the subject. It makes me angry. Are your people curious about why you got home so terribly late?”

“I coasted the last half block and into the driveway with the lights and motor off.”

“That was very clever, dear.”

“Nobody said anything about it today.”

After a silence she leaned her forehead against his shoulder and said in a small voice, “Do you know what you do when something keeps on seeming so unreal? You find out just as soon as you can if it was really real.”

She walked her fingers up his broad hard chest and, starting at the throat, undid the first three brass buttons.

“Right n-now?” he asked hoarsely.

She straightened and looked at him. He had gone pale enough to make his tan look odd. He wiped his mouth on the back of his hand.

“My darling, we’ll try to get along without any rules at all, but there should be one rule. Whenever we want each other as desperately as we do right now, we’ll never let anything stand in the way. Be a dear and go pull those draperies. The cords are over at the right.”

She turned her head and looked at the clock radio near the bed and saw that it was three thirty in the afternoon. She rolled her head back on the pillow and saw that the boy would soon be fast asleep. She bit her lip and debated changing the schedule she had planned for him. He was adapting more swiftly than she had estimated.

Funny, she thought, how often Phil Kerna kept coming back into her mind. All tenderness and cajolerie and sweet words until he had slipped the collar around your neck so deftly you hardly noticed it. Then he could risk the flat hateful stare, give the harsh commands, knowing a humble obedience was your only choice.

“Oliver!”

“Uh?” he said, and opened his eyes, focused on the face so close to his.

She hitched herself up, resting her weight on her elbows so she could look down into his eyes in the half light of the draperied bedroom. She studied him with a flat, bright, questing stare, unsmiling, until he asked her if something was wrong.

“I was wondering about something, Oliver.”

“Wondering what?”

“Perhaps I was wondering if you think this is some sort of a game. A little diversion.”

His eyes widened. “Honest, Crissy, I...”

“You must understand that I am a very intense person, darling. As soon as I’m certain that you mean as much to me as — I think you mean right now, there aren’t going to be any half measures for me. For me it is going to be a hundred and ten percent. Or nothing at all.”