Ira Levin: A Kiss Before Dying

On first meeting Dorothy and discovering, through one of the student-secretaries in the Registrar's office, that she was not merely one of the 'Kingship Copper" Kinships but actually a daughter of the corporation's president, he had written a businesslike letter to the organization's New York office. In it he represented himself as contemplating an investment in Kingship Copper (which was not entirely an untruth), and requested descriptive brochures of its holdings.

Two weeks later, when he was reading Rebecca and pretending to love it because it was Dorothy's favorite book, and when she was doggedly knitting him bulky argyle socks because a previous boyfriend had liked them and so the knitting of them had become the badge of her devotion, the pamphlets arrived. He opened their envelope with ceremonial care. They proved wonderful-Technical Information on Kingship Copper and Copper Alloys and Kingship Copper, Pioneer in Peace and War they were called, and they were crammed with photographs: mines and furnaces, concentrators and converters, reversing mills, rolling mills, rod mills and tube mills. He read them a hundred times and knew every caption by heart. He returned to them at odd moments, a musing smile on his lips, like a woman with a love letter.

Tonight they were no good. "Open-cut mine in Landers, Michigan. From this single mine, a yearly output..."

What angered him most was that in a sense the responsibility for the entire situation rested with Dorothy. He had wanted to take her to his room only once -a down-payment guaranteeing the fulfillment of a contract. It was Dorothy, with her gently closed eyes and her passive, orphan hunger, who had wished for further visits. He struck the table. It really was her fault! Damn her!

He dragged his mind back to the pamphlets, but it was no use; after a minute he pushed them away and rested his head in his hands again. If the pills didn't work... Leave school? Ditch her? It would be futile; she knew his Menasset address. Even if she should be reluctant to seek him out, her father would hasten to do so. Of course there could be no legal action (or could there?), but Kingship could still cause him plenty of trouble. He imagined the wealthy as a closely knit, mutually protective clan, and he could hear Leo Kingship: "Watch out for this young man. He's no good. I feel it my duty as a parent to warn you..." And what would be left for him then? Some shipping room?

Or if he married her. Then she would have the baby and they'd never get a cent out of Kingship. Again the shipping room, only this time saddled with a wife and child. Oh God!

The pills had to work. That was all there was to it. If they failed, he didn't know what he'd do.

The book of matches was white, with Dorothy Kingship stamped on it in copper leaf. Every Christmas Kingship Copper gave personalized matches to its executives, customers and friends. It took her four strokes to light the match, and when she held it to her cigarette the flame trembled as though in a breeze. She sat back, trying to relax, but she couldn't tear her eyes from the open bathroom door, the white envelope waiting on the edge of the sink, the glass of water...

She closed her eyes. If only she could speak to Ellen about it. A letter had come that morning-"The weather has been beautiful... president of the refreshment committee for the Junior Prom... have you read Marquand's new novel?..."-another of the meaningless mechanical notes that had been drifting between them since Christmas and the argument. If only she could get Ellen's advice, talk to her the way they used to talk...

Dorothy had been five and Ellen six when Leo Kingship divorced his wife. A third sister, Marion, was ten. When the three girls lost their mother, first through the divorce and then through her death a year later, Marion felt the loss most deeply of all. Recalling clearly the accusations and denunciations which had preceded the divorce, she recounted them in bitter detail to her sisters as they grew up. She exaggerated Kingship's cruelty to some degree. As the years passed she grew apart, solitary and withdrawn. Dorothy and Ellen, however, turned to each other for the affection which they received neither from their father, who met their coldness with coldness, nor from the series of odorless and precise governesses to whom he transferred the custody the courts had granted him. The two sisters went to the same schools and camps, joined the same clubs and attended the same dances (taking care to return home at the hour designated by their father). Where Ellen led, Dorothy followed.

But when Ellen entered Caldwell College, in Caldwell, Wisconsin, and Dorothy made plans to follow her there the next year, Ellen said no; Dorothy should grow up and become self-reliant. Their father agreed, self-reliance being a trait he valued in himself and in others. A measure of compromise was allowed, and Dorothy was sent to Stoddard, slightly more than a hundred miles from Caldwell, with the understanding that the sisters would visit one another on weekends. A few visits were made, the length of time between them increasing progressively, until Dorothy austerely announced that her first year of college had made her completely self-reliant, and the visits stopped altogether. Finally, this past Christmas, there had been an argument. It had started on nothing-"If you wanted to borrow my blouse you might at least have asked me!"-and had swollen because Dorothy had been in a depressed mood all during her vacation. When the girls returned to school, the letters between them faded to brief, infrequent notes. . . There was still the telephone. Dorothy found herself staring at it. She could get Ellen on the line in an instant. . . But no; why should she be the one to give in first and chance a rebuff? She squashed her cigarette in an ashtray. Besides, now that she had calmed down, what was there to hesitate about? She would take the pills; if they worked, all well and good. If not; marriage. She thought about how wonderful that would be, even if her father did have a fit She didn't want any of his money anyway.

She went to the hall door and locked it, feeling a slight thrill in the unaccustomed and somewhat melodramatic act.

In the bathroom, she took the envelope from the edge of the sink and tilted the capsules into her palm. They were gray-white, their gelatin coating lustrous, like elongated pearls. Then, as she dropped the envelope into the wastebasket, the thought flashed into her mind-"What if I don't take them?"

They would be married tomorrow! Instead of waiting until the summer, or more likely until graduation-over two years-they'd be married by tomorrow night!

But it wouldn't be fair. She had promised she would try. Still, tomorrow..."

She lifted the glass, clapped the pills into her mouth, and drained the water in a single draught.

The classroom, in one of Stoddard's new buildings, was a clean rectangle with one wall of aluminum-framed glass. Eight rows of seats faced the lecturer's platform. There were ten gray metal seats to a row, each with a right arm that curved in and fanned to form a writing surface.

He sat in the back of the room, in the second seat from the window. The seat on his left, the window seat, the empty seat, was hers. It was the first class of the morning, a daily Social Science lecture, and their only class together this semester. The speaker's voice droned in the sun-filled air.

Today of all days she could have made an effort to be on time. Didn't she know he'd be frozen in an agony of suspense? Heaven or hell. Complete happiness, or the awful mess he didn't even want to think about. He looked at his watch; 9: 08. Damn her.

He shifted in his seat, fingering his keychain nervously. He stared at the back of the girl in front of him and started to count the polka dots in her blouse. The door at the side of the room opened quietly. His head jerked around.