Джеймс Кейн - Mildred Pierce

“It could be, with a little money spent on it.”

“Yes, that’s what I mean... What do they want for it, Monty?”

For the first time that afternoon, Monty really looked at her. All the places he had taken her to had been quoted around $10,000: evidently it hadn’t occurred to him she could possibly be interested in this formidable pile. He stared, then said: “Year before last, seventy-five flat — and it’s worth every cent of it. Last year, fifty. This year, thirty, subject to a lien of thirty-one hundred for unpaid taxes — all together around thirty-three thousand dollars.”

Mildred’s information was that it could be had for twenty-eight and a half, plus the tax lien, and she noted ironically that he was a little better salesman than she had given him credit for. However, all she said was: “Beautiful, beautiful!” Then she went to the door, and peeped in.

It had changed somewhat since her last visit, that night in the rain. All the furniture, all the paintings, all the rugs, all the dust cloths, were gone, and in places the paper hung down in long strips. When she tiptoed inside, her shoes gritted on the floor, and she could hear gritty, hesitant echoes of her steps. Keeping up a sort of self-conscious commentary, he led her through the first floor, then up to the second. Presently they were in his own quarters, the same servants’ apartment he had occupied before. The servants’ furniture was gone, but in its place were a few oak pieces with leather seats, which she identified at once as having come from the shack at Lake Arrowhead. She sat down, sighed, and said it certainly would feel good to rest for a few minutes. He quickly offered tea, and when she accepted he disappeared into the bedroom. Then he came out and asked: “Or would you like something stronger? I have the heel of a bottle here.”

“I’d love something stronger.”

“I’m out of ice and seltzer, but—”

“I prefer it straight.”

“Since when?”

“Oh, I’ve changed a lot.”

The bottle turned out to be Scotch, which to her taste was quite different from rye. As she gagged over the first sip he laughed and said: “Oh, you haven’t changed much. On liquor I’d say you were about the same.”

“That’s what you think.”

He checked this lapse into the personal, and resumed his praise of the house. She said: “Well you don’t have to sell me. I’m already sold, if wanting it is all. And you don’t have to sit over there yelling at me, as though I was deaf. There’s room over here, isn’t there?”

Looking a little foolish, he crossed to the settee she was occupying. She took his little finger, tweaked it. “You haven’t even asked me how I am, yet.”

“How are you?”

“Fine.”

“Then that’s that.”

“How are you?”

“Fine.”

“Then that’s that.”

She tweaked his little finger again. He drew it away and said: “You know, gentlemen in my circumstances don’t have a great deal of romance in their lives. If you keep this up, you might find yourself the victim of some ravening brute, and you wouldn’t like that, would you?”

“Oh, being ravened isn’t so bad.”

He looked away quickly and said: “I think we’ll talk about the house.”

“One thing bothers me about it.”

“What’s that?”

“If I should buy it, as I’m half a mind to, where would you be? Would there be a brute ravening around somewhere, or would I have it all to myself?”

“It would be all yours.”

“I see.”

She reached again for his finger. He pulled it away before she caught it, looking annoyed. Then, rather roughly, he put his arm around her. “Is that what you want?”

“H’m-h’m.”

“Then that’s that.”

But she had barely settled back when he took his arm away. “I made a slight mistake about the price of this house. To you, it’s twenty-nine thousand, five hundred, and eighty. That’ll square up a little debt I owe you, of five hundred and twenty dollars, that’s been bothering me for quite some time.”

“You owe me a debt?”

“If you try, I think you can recall it.”

He looked quite wolfish, and she said “Booh!” He laughed, took her in his arms, touched the zipper on the front of her dress. Some little time went by, one half of him, no doubt, telling him to let the zipper alone, the other half telling him it would be ever so pleasant to give it a little pull. Then she felt her dress loosen, as the zipper began to slide. Then she felt herself being carried. Then she felt herself, with suitable roughness, being dumped down on the same iron bed, on the same tobacco-laden blankets, from which she had kicked the beach bag, years before, at Lake Arrowhead.

“Damn it, your legs are still immoral.”

“You think they’re bowed?”

“Stop waving them around.”

“I asked you—”

“No.”

Around dark, she grew sentimentally weepy. “Monty, I couldn’t live here without you. I couldn’t, that’s all.”

Monty lay still, and smoked a long time. Then, in a queer, shaky voice he said: “I always said you’d make some guy a fine wife if you didn’t live in Glendale.”

“Are you asking me to marry you?”

“If you move to Pasadena, yes.”

“You mean if I buy this house.”

“No — it’s about three times as much house as you need, and I don’t insist on it. But I will not live in Glendale.”

“Then all right!”

She snuggled up to him, tried to be kittenish, but while he put his arm around her he continued sombre, and he didn’t look at her. Presently it occurred to her that he might be hungry, and she asked if he would like to ride to Laguna with her, and have dinner. He thought a moment, then laughed. “You’d better go to Laguna alone, and I’ll open myself another can of beans. My clothes, at the moment, aren’t quite suitable to dining out. Unless, of course, you want me to put on a dinner coat. That mockery of elegance happens to be all I have left.”

“We never had that New Year’s party yet.”

“Oh didn’t we?”

“And we don’t have to go to Laguna... I love you in a dinner coat, Monty. If you’ll put one on, and then drive over with me while I put on my mockery of elegance, we can step out. We can celebrate our engagement. That is, if we really are engaged.”

“All right, let’s do it.”

She spanked him on his lean rump, hustled him out of bed, and jumped out after him. She was quite charming in such moments, when she took absurd liberties with him, and for one flash his face lit up, and he kissed her before they started to dress. But he was sombre again when they arrived at her house. She put out whiskey, ice, and seltzer, and he made himself a drink. While she was dressing he wandered restlessly about, and then put his head in her bedroom and asked if he could put a telegram on her phone. “I’d like Mother to know.”

“Would you like to talk to her?”

“It’s a Philadelphia call.”

“Well my goodness, you act as if it was Europe. Certainly call her up. And you can tell her it’s all settled about the house, at thirty thousand, without any foolish deductions of five hundred and twenty dollars, or whatever it was. If that’s what’s been worrying her, tell her not to worry anymore.”

“I’d certainly love to.”

He went to the den, and she went on with her dressing. The blue evening dress was long since outmoded, but she had another one, a black one, that she liked very well, and she had just laid it out when he appeared at the door. “She wants to speak to you.”

“Who?”

“Mother.”

In spite of success, money, and long experience at dealing with people, a qualm shot through Mildred as she sat down to the phone, in a hastily donned kimono, to talk to this woman she had never met. But when she picked up the receiver and uttered a quavery hello, the cultured voice that spoke to her was friendship itself. “Mrs. Pierce?”