Jan Burke - Eighteen

Bill looked up to see a familiar figure coming toward him. Not the one he most wanted to see, but close enough. Harry had come to fetch him.

“Did she send you for me, Harry?” Bill asked, allowing Harry to lead him outside.

“No, sir.”

“You came on your own?” he asked in surprise. Harry had never indicated approval of Bill, a lack Bill took to mean disapproval.

“No, sir,” Harry replied, but Bill noticed that the old man actually seemed a little embarrassed to admit it. Harry gently guided him into the back seat of the Rolls.

Bill waited until Harry got into the car. He felt as if he might be sick, but he fought it off. “Why’d you come after me?” he persisted.

“Miss Miriam suggested it. She has many suggestions, sir.”

Bill signaled him to wait, opened the door and spared the upholstery.

Harry drove him home, windows down. But even over the long ride, Bill had sobered little. He made it into the house under his own steam, and began the climb the stairs. He swayed a bit as he reached for the bedroom doorknob, twisted it, and found it locked. He stared at it in his hand, as if somehow he were just doing it wrong, this simple act of opening a door.

Harry came in then, and quietly coming up the stairs, asked in a whisper if Bill might need some assistance. Bill was hanging on to the knob, staring dumbly at the door. Harry reached and tried the knob, then murmured, “It’s locked, sir. Perhaps…” but his voice broke off as they heard another door open.

Miriam, clad in a nightgown that seemed to offer little difference from sleeping in the nude, smiled and called out, “Ellie left some things for you outside the bedroom off your office downstairs. I guess you’re in the dog house tonight, Billy Boy.”

“You seem happy to hear it,” Bill said, trying to stand up straight. Having this greedy woman in the household would sorely try him. Harry stepped aside as Miriam came closer. Miriam tried to put an arm around Bill, giggling when he clumsily pushed her hand from his waist. She stepped back.

“Why do you two stay together?” she asked. “Ellie doesn’t seem interested. I could see why you tried to win her over at first, but now-well, why bother? You’ve got plenty of money. Most women would consider you quite a catch.”

“For your information,” Bill said, his drunken state not obscuring her intentions, “I wouldn’t make any money without your sister. If I leave her, I can’t write. She’s my Muse.”

Whatever reply Miriam might have made was lost when a loud crash sounded against the other side of the bedroom door.

“Ellie! Are you all right?” Bill called frantically.

“Go to hell!” came Ellie’s voice from the other side.

Bill heard Miriam giggle behind him as she closed her bedroom door.

“Don’t do this, sir.”

Bill was so taken aback by Harry’s plea that he stopped packing for a moment. But he shook his head and latched the suitcase.

“Sorry, Harry. I can take the silent treatment, and finding out that she threw a portrait of me against the door that night. I can even take the blame for starting this. But I can’t stay here if she doesn’t trust me.”

Until that afternoon, Bill hadn’t heard a word from Ellie in three days. After that first morning, when Harry brought Bill’s clothes into the bedroom adjoining Bill’s office, Bill hadn’t tried to go back to the room he had shared with her. He had heard her move about in her office, just on the other side of the wall. Each day, she had gone from her room to her office and back again, speaking only to Miriam or Harry. Miriam, suddenly the solicitous sister, would take meals to Ellie in her room. Bill tried to ignore it, told himself her temper would cool, and he would be able to tell her just how much she meant to him, that she was much more to him than the means to an end. Until then, he would keep his distance.

But this morning she had ventured outside the house, asking Harry to take her for a ride. They had been gone for about an hour when Bill heard someone rustling papers in her office, and went to investigate. Miriam was bent over some documents on Ellie’s desk, pen in hand.

“What are you doing?” he asked, startling her.

“None of your business.”

He moved closer, and she snatched one of the pages off the desk and wadded it up in her hand.

“Why are you in Ellie’s office?” he asked, glancing at a contract Ellie had signed, the document Miriam had been studying.

“I said, none of your business.”

He reached out and grabbed the hand with the paper in it. She clawed at his face, struggling furiously, but he caught both of her wrists and squeezed until she let the paper drop. He bent to pick it up even as Miriam ran crying from the room.

He sat down at the desk, ignoring the sting of the scratches. The contract was nothing unusual, he noted, as he smoothed the paper out. Ellie’s signature was on the scrap. But as he studied it closer, he realized it was almost Ellie’s signature.

A tearful voice took his attention from the paper. “I caught him trying to forge your signature. I grabbed the paper he was practicing on and he attacked me!”

He looked up to see Ellie staring at him in disbelief.

“Ellie…“he protested, standing up.

“Did you do this to her?”

She held out Miriam’s wrists. There were dark red marks on them.

“Yes, but Ellie…”

“I don’t want to hear it!”

She led Miriam from the room, consoling her.

And so he left the house in the hills. He had no trouble finding a house to rent. He told himself he only rented one because he was too busy finishing his manuscript to do serious house-hunting. Never mind that he was finished before his deadline. While waiting for his editor’s response, he began outlining another work, writing character sketches. He told himself this productivity was a sign that he was readjusting, living a new life.

But he knew that wasn’t the truth. The truth was, he wrote because writing was all he had left. He felt closer to her when he wrote, even as he told himself he didn’t miss her. But that was the biggest lie of all.

When his editor proclaimed the new manuscript Bill’s best work, Bill didn’t feel the sense of elation such praise might have once brought. Ellie wasn’t his link to writing after all. It wasn’t inspiration he missed; it was Ellie herself.

He found himself on Westwood Boulevard at three in the morning, staring at the place where the gas station had been. It was gone, transformed into a parking lot. But as he stared, a gold Rolls-Royce was pulled into the empty lot.

For a moment, his heart leapt. But then he saw that Harry was driving.

Alone.

It wasn’t the first time he had seen Harry. Harry kept tabs on him, he knew. In the beginning, he thought that she might have asked Harry to do so, then realized that Harry only appeared on his day off. Harry seldom spoke to him, and never mentioned Ellie. But it seemed to Bill that Harry was looking older each time he encountered him.

“Evening, sir.”

“Hello, Harry.” And then, breaking a promise he had made to himself, he asked, “How is she?”

Harry seemed to perk up a bit. He studied Bill’s face, then seemed to make up his mind about something. “She’s not well, sir.”

“Not well?”

“No, sir.”

“Nothing serious, I hope?”

Harry was silent.

“Harry, did she put you up to this? Is she trying to get me to come back? Because I’m doing just fine on my own now.”

Harry shook his head. “You disappoint me, sir.” He stepped back to the car.

“Harry, wait.”

Harry waited.

“Does she know you watch over me?”

“No, sir. But for some time now she has…I mean to say sir, that whatever has gone before, at present she may be too ill to contact you herself.”