James Chase: Eve

“I see.” I felt suddenly disgusted. “Well, never mind. I want to meet her,” and I walked over to the fire and stood close to the woman.

She turned her head, looked at my feet and then looked abruptly up at me.

I smiled. “Hello,” I said.

“Hello,” she returned and looked back into the fire.

I had only one brief glance at her heart-shaped face with its firm mouth, stubborn chin and strangely disconcerting eyes. But it was enough. I had a sudden stiffled feeling, the kind of feeling you get when on top of a high mountain, and I knew what that meant.

It wasn’t that she was pretty. She was, if anything, plain, but there was something magnetic about her that stirred me. Perhaps magnetic was not quite the right word. I instinctively knew that behind her mask she was primitively bad and there was something almost animal in her make-up. Just to look at her was like getting a jolt of electricity.

I decided that, after all, the evening was not going to be so bad. In fact, it looked as if it were going to be exceedingly interesting.

“Won’t you have a drink?” I asked, hoping that she would look up again, but she didn’t. She lowered herself to the carpet and tucked her legs under her.

“I have one.” She pointed to the glass that stood near her in the hearth.

Barrow came over. “This is Eve . . . Eve . . .” and he floundered, his face reddening.

“Marlow,” the woman said, her fist clenched tightly in her lap.

“Yeah,” Barrow said quickly. “I’ve a lousy memory for names.” He looked at me and I could see he had already forgotten mine. I was not going to help him. If a man could , not remember the name of his mistress then to hell with him.

“So you got wet,” I said to the woman and laughed.

She looked up. I don’t believe in first impressions, but I knew she was a rebel. I knew she had a hell of a temper, swift, violent and uncontrolled. Although she was slight, her whole make-up — her eyes, the way she held herself, her expression — gave the impression of strength. She had two deep furrows above the bridge of her nose. They were responsible to some degree for the character in her face, and could only have come from worry and much suffering. I became intensely curious to know more about her.

“I did get wet,” she said and laughed too.

Her laugh startled me. It was unexpectedly pleasing as well as infectious. When she laughed, she glanced up and her expression altered, the hard lines went away and she looked younger. It was difficult to guess her age. Somewhere in the thirties; maybe thirty-eight, maybe thirty-three; when she laughed, she could have been twenty-five:

Barrow looked a little sick. He eyed us both suspiciously. He had reason. If he listened carefully he would have heard my glands working.

“I got wet too,” I said, sitting down in the armchair close to her. “If I’d known it was going to be as bad as this, I would have spent the night in San Bernadino. I’m certainly glad now I didn’t.” They both gave me a quick look. “Have you come far?”

There was a pause. Eve looked into the fire. Barrow rolled his glass between his thick fingers. You could almost hear him think.

“Los Angeles,” he said, at last.

“I get around Los Angeles quite a bit,” I said, speaking to Eve. “How come I’ve never seen you before?”

She gave me a hard, blank stare and then looked quickly away. “I don’t know,” she said.

Perhaps Barrow saw what I was going to do, for he suddenly finished his whisky and tapped Eve on her shoulder.

“You’d better go to bed,” he said in a domineering voice.

I thought if she has got what I think she has then she’ll tell him to go to hell; but she didn’t. “All right,” she said indifferently and rolled onto her knees.

“You mustn’t go yet,” I said. “Aren’t you two hungry? I have some stuff in the ice box that wants eating. What do you say?”

Barrow was watching Eve with uneasy, possessive eyes. “We had dinner at Glendora on our way up. She’d better go . . . she must be tired.”

I looked at him and laughed, but he wouldn’t play. He stared down at his empty glass, veins throbbing in his temples.

Eve stood up. She was even smaller and slighter than I had first supposed. Her head barely reached my shoulder.

“Where do I sleep?” she asked. Her eyes looked over my shoulder.

“Please keep the room you’re in now. I’ll use the guest room. But, if you don’t really want to go to bed, just yet, I’d be glad to have you stay.”

“I want to go.” She was half-way to the door.

When she had gone, I said, “I’ll see if she has everything,” and followed her out before Barrow could move.

She was standing by the electric heater, her hands behind her head. She stretched, yawned and when she saw me in the doorway, her mouth pursed and a calculating expression came into her eyes.

“Have you everything you need?” I asked, smiling at her. “Sure you won’t have something to eat?”

She laughed. I had a suspicion that she was mocking me and she knew why I was so concerned for her comfort. I hoped that she did know, because it would save time and dispense with the preliminary advances.

“I don’t want anything . . . thank you.”

“Well, if you’re sure, but I want you to feel at home. This is the first time I’ve had a woman in my cabin, so it’s kind of an occasion.” I knew I had made a mistake as soon as I had spoken.

The smile immediately went from her eyes and the cold quizzing look came back. “Oh?” she said, moving to the bed. She took a pink silk night dress out of her grip and tossed it carelessly into the chair.

She knew I was lying and the way her expression changed told me she expected me to be a liar anyway. This annoyed me. “Is that hard to believe?” I asked, stepping further into the room.

She bundled various garments scattered on the bed into her bag and then moved it onto the floor. “Is what hard to believe?” she asked, going to the dressing table.

“That I don’t have women here?”

“It’s nothing to me who you have here, is it?”

Of course she was right, but I was irritated by her indifference.

“Put like that,” I said, feeling snubbed, “I suppose it isn’t.”

She patted her hair absently and looked hard at herself in the mirror. I felt that she had forgotten that I was in the room.

“You’d better let me have your wet clothes,” I said. “I’ll put them in the kitchen to dry.”

“I can take care of them.” She turned abruptly away from the mirror and pulled her dressing gown more closely to her. The two furrows above the bridge of her nose were knitted in a frown. But, in spite of her plainness, and she looked very plain with that wooden look on her face, she intrigued me.

She glanced at the door and then at me. She did this twice before it dawned on me that she was silently telling me to go. It was a new experience for me and I did not like it.

“I want to go to bed . . . if you don’t mind,” she said and turned away from me.

No gratitude, no thanks, no question about taking my room, just a cool, deliberate brush-off.

Barrow was fixing himself a drink when I entered the sitting room. He lurched unsteadily as he made his way back to the armchair. He sat down and stared up at me, screwing up his eyes to see me more clearly. “Don’t get ideas about her,” he said, suddenly banging his fist down on the armchair. “You lay off. Do you understand?”

I stared at him. “Are you talking to me?” I said, outraged that he dared to take such an attitude.

His red face sagged a little. “You leave her alone,” he mumbled. “She’s mine for tonight. I know what you’re up to, but let me tell you something.” He edged forward and pointed a stumpy finger at me, his slack mouth working. “I’ve bought her. She cost me a hundred bucks. Do you hear? I’ve bought her! So keep off the grass.”