Джон Макдональд - You Live Once

“It happens to the carefullest.”

“I wasn’t very careful. You’re sweet, Clint.”

“Friend of the family.”

“Would you do me one more thing?”

“Sure.”

“Drive me home. Don’t tell Dodd you’re doing it. Tell him when you get back. If you tell him now he’ll insist on taking me home. He won’t say anything later but he’ll have that damn patient look that will mean I spoiled the party. Added to everything else, of course. Do you mind?”

“No. Want to leave now?”

“Please.”

I drove her to the Raymond home. It was a high-shouldered job, mansard roof, iron fence, in a neighborhood that was decaying in slow genteel fashion, preparing its soul for the inevitable invasion of funeral parlor, supermarket and masseuse. The big house was dark.

“We moved Mother Raymond up to the place at the lake early this afternoon,” she explained. “I wouldn’t dare come home alone if she was here. She said it was earlier than usual for her. Then she sighed and she said it would be nice for us two young people to be alone. And she sighed again and said she hoped it wouldn’t be so damp at the lake this time of year, and so cold that it would hurt her arthritis. Sigh, sigh, sigh. Damn it all!”

I walked her up to the door and she handed me the key. I opened the big door and it creaked as it swung back. She reached inside and found a switch that turned on the light in the big narrow gloomy hallway.

“Clint, I talked too much. I talked an awful lot too much.”

“I can’t remember a darn word, somehow.”

“Can I tell you you’re a nice guy?”

“Sure.”

“You’re a nice guy. What I said is between us. I’m unhappy here and I drank too much and I’m ashamed of myself. This isn’t my house and it doesn’t seem like my husband any more and I became a fool tonight. I won’t do it again. That isn’t the way to fight this thing. That’s the way to hand him to her on a platter, with an apple and cloves. I’ll do better.”

“I know you will, Nancy. Temporary lapse. Maybe overdue.”

She smiled. “If I wasn’t so messy, I’d like to be kissed.”

I put my hands on her shoulders and kissed her forehead. “That do?”

“It does fine, Clint. Goodnight... and thanks.”

I drove back to the club. The dancing had started. The five piece orchestra sounded like an awkward fusion of Meyer Davis and Bobby Hackett. Every other number was mechanical Latin, gourds and all. Dodd wasn’t on the floor. I tracked him down over in the men’s bar. He was talking down at a man who looked like a bald Pekingese. When I caught his eye he wound up the conversation and came over to me, glass in hand.

“Where’s Nancy?”

“She didn’t feel good. She had me take her home.”

“Why didn’t you tell me? I could have taken her home.”

“She wanted it that way.”

“I’ve never seen her do that before. I can’t understand what got into her.” He glanced at me sideways, suspicion shining in his eyes.

I made a noncommittal sound. It was no time for a brand new friend of the family to tell husband he knew what was wrong with wife.

“Did she tell you what was eating on her?”

“No. Is something?”

“There must be, for her to act like this. My God, she knows how this town is. They’ll clack for a week. I suppose I ought to get on home. Wait a minute, we all came in your car. Well, I can get a taxi.”

“She sounded as if she’d like it better if you stayed, Dodd. She said she didn’t want to spoil your evening.”

“Any more than she already has.” He finished his drink, reached over and set the empty glass on the bar. “I might as well hang around, I guess. Buy you a drink, Clint?”

“Not right now, thanks.”

He put his hand on my shoulder, gave me a couple of squeezes. I was born with a catlike aversion to such stray gestures. I merely endure them, hoping my expression doesn’t give away my distaste. Besides, there was something forced about the way he did it. He looked at me intently. “Clint, I’ve never had a chance to tell you how damn well much it means to me to come out here and find a guy like you to help carry the ball. I mean that.”

“Well, thanks, Dodd.”

“You know what you can get sometimes in this outfit. A politico. An oily switch artist. Hell, I know where you stand.”

He took his hand off my shoulder, made a fist out of it and punched me lightly in the arm. “We’re both going places in this outfit, boy.”

I told him I hoped so and watched his broad back as he went off toward the festivities. It was obvious that he had just enough quasi-feminine perception to sense that Nancy had somehow acquired an ally; how much else she might have in me he couldn’t tell. He wanted to pour a little water on the flame. Deciding that wouldn’t do, he had built a back fire. I cannot say that it was ineffective — mellow words from the boss are always welcome. And he was almost a nice guy.

Between eleven and twelve the party was in overdrive. Every time I saw Mary she was with Dodd. A junior miss who took considerable pride in the gaudy details of the recent escapade that had gotten her tossed out of Sweet Briar on her pretty tail, had taken me over and kept bruising my morale by frequent references to how much “older men” appealed to her.

She steered me, not too unwillingly, out into the darkness. But when I came to kiss her she sagged softly against me, a boneless, gasping, wide-mouthed horror. I have no idea where and how such a response happened to become fashionable among the younger set. Maybe they think it sets a mood of sweet surrender. You reach for a firm-boned young morsel and she falls into suet. I pushed her away and eased her back into the bright lights.

After the first cut-in I moved back out into the shrubbery alone. The clouds had thinned and a moon cruised blandly through the ragged edges. Music thudded out across the somber fairways. I fingered an empty cigarette package and remembered the half carton in the glove compartment. I walked across the grass toward the parking lot.

I was close enough to the car to touch it when I heard Mary Olan’s voice coming from inside the car. Her tone was lazy, taunting. “My dear, you aren’t on the basis where all you have to do is whistle. So I won’t take your key. Any time I go back there — if I ever do go back there — you’ll damn well be there waiting for me, not I for you. This isn’t Back Street, sweets.”

Dodd’s heavy voice said, “This double-dating is childish.”

“Is it? I know what you want. You want me waiting there for you any time you happen to take a notion. You don’t want me to go out at all. I happen to like this arrangement. Clint is sweet. Wasn’t he sweet with your plotzed Nancy?”

“Are you falling for him? Damn it, if I find out you’ve let him get to you, I’ll get him shipped so far away from here he’ll...”

“Jealous, darling?” she drawled.

“Why don’t you just take the key and then...”

“You want one cake to eat, one to look at and one in the cupboard. No thanks. I might decide never to pay you another visit there.”

“Mary, listen to me...”

“You listen to me. You’re boring me. That wasn’t in the agreement. I’ll continue to go out with Clint. You’ll continue to come along too, with Nancy. It’s a cozy arrangement... And I’m getting sick of sitting here like a college girl on a date.”

“But tonight Clint took her home and we could...”

“We could but we won’t, dear. Not tonight. Face it like a brave little man.”

I had stood there and listened. And learned a great deal. It was a situation that smelled faintly of mental illness.

“But Mary...”

“And, darling, I didn’t like that phrase ‘get to me.’ People don’t ‘get to me.’ I get to people. Now if you’d take that slightly clumsy hand off my breast...”