Джон Макдональд - S*E*V*E*N

Grab at some other nonsense phrase to drive the first one away. Like singing a song to get rid of a song.

“Guilty of hannenframmis,” he said.

“What? What, darling?” she asked, speaking up out of motion and lostness.

“Nothing.”

“Guilty of something.”

“Hush, darling. Come on, now.”

He had sensed that she was close, but his idiot phrase had shifted her concentration. She was working, but not making it back to where she had been. He knew that he could not wait, and did not want to stop, so he rocked to the side and gave her a great ringing stinging slap on her sea-salty, sweat-salty elegant haunch. So she yelped, leaped like a racing mare, clung, and came thundering home.

So later, dazed face frowning down at him, propped up on her elbow. “What was it you said about guilty?”

“Guilty of hannenframmis.”

“What did they used to call that? Double-talk. Yes. Why did you say it then?”

“It came into my mind, I guess.”

“Why would it come into your mind?”

“For God’s sake, Geri! Nobody knows what makes things come into your mind.”

“There’s always a reason, they say.”

“Okay. I don’t know the reason. It was something in the dream I had.”

“You dreamed I was guilty of... whatever that is?”

“ I was guilty. I was in court. They gave me three life sentences.”

“Darling, I don’t want you to be troubled. I don’t want you to have bad dreams. I don’t want us to think about anything but us. There’s only three more days.”

“I’m not troubled!”

“You wouldn’t be cross to me if you weren’t.” She got up with quiet dignity and went into the bathroom and closed the door. Soon he heard the shower.

“Fye-nance-you-wull. Fye-nance-you-wull. Fye-nance-you-wull.” Get over it, baby. Marry well. Take good care of the boys.

He sighed and got up and went into the bathroom and made jokes and scrubbed her narrow lovely back, and she was in a good mood and wearing a pretty dress when they went up to the hotel, had rum drinks, watched the sunset, ate steaks, danced.

They walked on the beach and then went back to the cabana. He had brought a newspaper back from the hotel. While she got ready for bed he looked at the stock market reports. Kallen was in the high forties, up a point and a half on the day in high volume. She came over in sheer shorty nightgown, spicy aroma of perfume, dark eyes shining, kissed him meaningfully, told him to come to bed, kind sir. Right away, ma’am.

The lights were bright in the bathroom. He could smell her soap and lotions, and the lingering steamy-sweet odor of her body. He tried to summon desire, but there was none. None at all.

Finished brushing teeth. Examined teeth in mirror. Turned toilet lid down. Sat on it. Had feeling he was looking for something and would not know what it was unless he happened to see it. Or see something that reminded him of what it was he was looking for.

He saw his dark red robe on the hook on the back of the door. The belt was a thick white cotton rope. He got up and pulled the white rope out of the loops. He turned and looked up over the tub at the brace which held the high window open. A very sturdy brace. Well made.

So two nonsense things could be fitted together into double nonsense. “Fye-nance-you-wull hannenframmis.” It did not sound right said aloud, but he discovered he could say it inside his head effectively. Fast or slow. High or low. Loud or soft.

Slip knot. Stand on edge of tub. Wedge knot firmly into narrow end of brace. Give tug. Now keep saying it all inside your head, fellow, because big Ruthie McGann is standing back there somewhere shouting, trying to get through. And she is yelling something about meaning it or not meaning it and not knowing if anything means anything. Crap like that you can do without. So fye-nance-you-wull-hannenframmis the hell out of her. Throw up a cloud of it. Wet the rope. Makes the knot harder. Good thought. Edge of tub. Erection? Why erection when the elegant lady doesn’t do a thing for it tonight? Keep that old double nonsense coming, fellow. Loud and fast and all inside the head. Yank tight. Take step. And keep it loud and fa—

During the last hour of the night, the charge nurse looked in at the critical in room 11, intensive-care section, coronary. She scowled and made an ugly, displeased mouth and hastened to replace the dislodged I.V. needle in the vein inside the elbow of the right arm, immobilized by the straps, the board, and the side rail of the bed. She checked the glucose drip, made a small adjustment of the flow valve, checked oxygen supply, listened to the ragged labor of the pulse, and went off and found the pretty little special drinking coffee in the treatment room and joking with the red-headed intern.

After chewing her out with a cold expertise that welled tears into the blue eyes, she herded her back to her night watch over the patient.

“I wasn’t gone three minutes, honest,” she said.

“An hour before dawn they get restless,” the charge nurse said. “As if they had someplace to go, some appointment to keep.”

When the first gray light of the morning made the shape of the window visible, he dressed quickly and went out. He guessed that they would not be expecting him to leave that room so soon after arriving.

There were shadows of night still remaining in the empty streets, so that even though he knew his way and walked swiftly, the city seemed strange to him. They were changing it so quickly these past few years. The eye becomes accustomed to the shape and bulk of structures, giving them only a marginal attention; yet when, so abruptly, they were gone, one had the feeling of having made a wrong turn somewhere. Then even the unchanged things began to look half strange.

He turned a dark comer and saw the hotel lights in the distance. A taxi came swiftly to the crosstown corner, made a wrenching, shuddering turn, and sped up the empty avenue, and he caught a silhouette glimpse of the sailboat hats of nuns in the dark interior, two or three of them.

He had not been in the hotel for years. He saw at once that it was quite changed. That certain quaintness of the lobby that once had set off the high style of the moneyed people and the women of the theater was now merely a shabbiness. He realized that he could have guessed it, because were it not changed, they would not be mixed up in this sort of thing. And his shabby assignment in an unknown room would have occurred in some other place, perhaps even in another city at another time.

There was no one behind the desk. He felt in his pocket for the identification he would have to present and felt fear and irritation when he did not find it at once. Then, among coins, he fingered the shape of it and took it out and held it in his clasped hand. As he wondered whether to tap the desk bell, he saw movement out of the side of his eye and turned and saw a man walking toward him out of the lobby shadows.

“Mr. Davis?” the small man said; and as he came into the light, his face was elusively familiar. He searched memory and finally recalled the image of the same face, a bellhop uniform in dull red and gray, big brass circle of the master key ring looped around the scrawny neck. And the name came back.

“Do you remember me, Leo? From before?”

“Sure,” the man said. He leaned against the desk and yawned. Davis knew the man did not remember him at all

“You’re the manager now?”

“So they keep telling me.”

“Come up in the world, eh?”

“I guess so.” He yawned again. “You got that thing?”

He felt unaccountably shy about revealing what they had given him. He said, “I keep telling them that they should use ordinary things. But they get fanciful. It just makes everything harder to explain when things go wrong. What kind of a sentimental nut would have a gold miniature of his own dog tag made? A grown man is supposed to get over being in a war.”