Флетчер Флора - Take Me Home

“I’m sick,” she said.

“It damn well serves you right,” he said.

She retched and rolled off the bed onto her feet and started for the bathroom. After three steps, she sank slowly to her knees with her arms reaching blindly for support.

She remained in that position, on her knees with her arms spread, and when he reached her and picked her up, her eyes were shut and her face reposed and her sickness apparently past. She was breathing quietly and deeply. Laying her on the bed and covering her again with the blanket, he stood looking down at her with a feeling of desperation. “Are you all right?” he said.

She shook her head, not so much, he thought, in answer to his question as to indicate that she wanted him to leave her alone. Well, he would leave her alone, all right, if that was what she wanted. He would leave her alone gladly until she had recovered sufficiently to dress and get out and go wherever she had to go, and that would be the end of her, and good riddance. Turning away, he was reminded by his bladder that he had not yet done what he had got up to do, and so he went into the bathroom and did it. Then he went back through the bedroom into the living room and sat down at the table and looked at his stack of manuscript. He wondered dully if he would ever in the world get it finished, and if he did, in time, if it would be worth the finishing. After half an hour, he went back into the bedroom and found Ivy Galvin lying quietly on her back with her eyes open. Turning her head on the pillow, she stared at him with undisguised malice.

“I suppose you think I ought to thank you,” she said.

“Not at all,” he said. “You’ve made it perfectly clear from the beginning that you don’t believe in thanking anyone for anything.”

“Why can’t you mind your own business?”

“Well, I’ll be damned if you aren’t the most incredible female I’ve ever been unlucky enough to meet! I’d like to remind you, in case you’ve forgotten, that you’ve been imposing yourself on me in every way that suited you, and I don’t mind telling you that I’ve had enough. What the hell do you mean by trying to kill yourself in my bathroom?”

“I can do as I please with myself. It’s not your affair.”

“The hell it isn’t! And what was I supposed to do with you after you were dead? Dump you in the alley? Simply call the morgue to come and get you? By God, do you suppose a body is something that can be disposed of without any explanations or any trouble at all?”

The malice in her expression was replaced by a kind of surprised acceptance of his point, and he had the impression, fantastic as it was, that she had not considered previously for a single instant the enormity of the consequences to him of what she had tried to do to herself.

“I didn’t think of that,” she said.

“Of course you didn’t. You never think of anyone but yourself.”

“Well, don’t feel so abused about it. I’m not dead, thanks to your meddling, and it’s apparent that I’m in no danger of dying.”

“Not because you didn’t try.”

“Perhaps I’ll try again.”

“All right. Better luck next time. Don’t think for a minute I care if you die or not, just so you do it somewhere else. When you get away from here, wherever you go, you can do as you like with yourself, whatever it may be.”

“You’re a mean bastard, aren’t you?”

“I don’t like women who try to leave their dead bodies in my bathroom, if that’s what you mean.”

“All you can think of is the little bit of trouble it would have caused you. You don’t care in the least what may happen to me.”

“That’s right. Not in the least.”

“In that case, I’d better go away at once.”

“The sooner the better.”

“I’m sorry I ever came.”

“So am I.”

“It would have been better to sleep in an alley.”

“You can sleep in an alley tonight.”

She had been lying quite still, only her eyes and lips moving, but now she sat up abruptly and turned back the blanket. Instantly she was still again, caught and fixed in rigidity as she stared down at her nearly naked body. After a few frozen seconds, she lay back, covering herself, and he realized from the harshness of her breathing and the crimson stains in her cheeks that she was exorbitantly furious.

“Where are my clothes?” she said.

“On the chair over there.”

“Hand them to me.”

“Why should I? Get them yourself.”

“You’d enjoy that, wouldn’t you?”

“Not at all. You’re nothing much to look at, you know.”

“If you know what’s good for you, you had better get out of here.”

“It’s my room, and I’ll get out when I’m damn good and ready.”

“I suppose it gave you a cheap thrill to take my clothes off when I couldn’t help myself.”

“Don’t be ridiculous. I’ve had more pleasure taking the panties off a lamb chop.”

“If you ever put your filthy hands on me again, I’ll kill you.”

“No danger. I never want to see you again, let alone touch you.”

His anger was at least equal to hers. She had imposed on him and put him in danger and was now accusing him unfairly of motives he hadn’t had, and he was confused, as well as angry, and desperately sick, besides, of her and her troubles, whatever they were precisely, and all he wanted was to be rid of her forever as quickly as could be. Retrieving her dress and slip, he threw them across the bed with a violence indicative of his anger.

“Let me tell you something,” he said. “I’ve only tried to help you when you needed it, which was a bad mistake, for all I’ve had from you is abuse and trouble and nasty allusions to your precious virtue, for the love of God, and if you want to do me a good turn for the one I tried to do you, you will get dressed and go find a place to kill yourself where no one else will be involved.”

He went out into the other room and sat down on the worn frieze sofa. He noticed in an ash tray the crushed butts of the three cigarettes Ivy Galvin had smoked, and he wondered if she had got up to smoke them in the night or if she had smoked them this morning after waking. He thought, wrongly, that she had probably smoked them in the night when she could not sleep for thinking about whatever it was that made her want to die, and he saw her suddenly with extraordinary vividness in his mind as she had not actually been, huddled alone in the dark in the room of a stranger that was the only place she could find in the end to go. Seeing her so, he felt his anger drain out of him, and he began to wish that he had not spoken to her with deliberate cruelty, or that he could, having spoken, take back what he had said. He cursed and closed his eyes and waited for her to come in, which she did about ten minutes later.

“Could you give me a little money?” she said.

“No,” he said.

“You could if you would.”

“All right, then. I won’t.”

“Why not?”

“Because I only have a little, and I need it for myself.”

“I suppose that’s so. You’re obviously very poor.”

“You said last night that you have some money at the place you came from. Why don’t you go there and get it?”

“I don’t want to.”

“You mean you’re afraid to?”

“No. Not exactly. I just don’t want to.”

“Where are you going?”

“When I leave here?”

“Yes.”

“I don’t know. Somewhere.”

“Jesus Christ,” he said with quiet despair. “You don’t know where you’re going, and you don’t have any money to get you there. What’s going to happen to you?”

“I don’t know that, either. Something.”

“Well, it’s not my fault. I’m not responsible for what you are, or what you’ve done, or anything that may happen.”