Charles Williams: Hell Hath No Fury

“Well, how are you standing the excitement?”

I shrugged. “Maybe it picks up on Saturday night.”

“Yes, it really does. They show two westerns at the movie instead of one.”

“Sounds pretty rugged.”

“Well, you can always join the Ladies’ Club and collect junk. There’s a hot pastime.”

“I might have trouble getting past the credentials committee.”

“I bet you wouldn’t if you approached ‘em one at a time. Meow.”

“What a way to talk about the Ladies!”

“They’re a bunch of dears.”

I put my glass on the coffee table and walked over to the front window to look out through the Venetian blind. The house across the street was a little further up and you couldn’t see it from here.

“Which one of ‘em lives over there?” I asked.

“Mrs. Gross. She’s the one with fourteen eyes and party-line ears.”

She put her glass down and walked over and stood close to me. “Well, what do you think of the view?”

I turned, and we were staring at each other again. “It’s better all the time.”

“Oh, I meant to ask you. Did you have any trouble finding the place?”

“No,” I said. “I could find it in the dark.”

“Are you sure?” she asked.

I put a hand behind her neck and then brought it up in back of the ash-blonde curls, holding it there and pulling her face against mine, hard, as I kissed her. Her mouth was soft and moist, and she came to me like a dachshund jumping into your lap. In a minute she turned her face aside and pushed back.

“You’d better get out.”

“Like hell.”

“I thought you told me you’d lived in a small town.”

“What of it?”

“Don’t you think that old witch over there watched you drive in here? And she’s watching right now, waiting for you to leave.”

I tried to take hold of her again, but she moved back, pushing at my arms. “Harry, get out!”

I could see she meant it, and somehow I had sense enough to realize she was right. There was no use asking for trouble.

“All right,” I said. “But don’t think you can tease me. I’ll be back.”

She didn’t say anything.

“Well?”

Her face was sullen. “Well?” she said.

I picked up my car at the lot and drove over to the rooming house. After standing under the shower a long time, I changed into slacks and T-shirt and drove down to Main. It was dusk now, with heat lying motionless and sticky in the streets, and bugs danced through the beams of weaving headlights. It was hard finding a parking place, but I finally beat two other cars to one in front of the bank and sat there for a while trying to push the sultry weights of Dolores Harshaw off my mind. She was dangerous in a town like this. The hell with her; I wouldn’t go back. But wouldn’t I? What about later on? Keeping the thought of her out of that bleak hotbox of a room was going to be like trying to dam a river with a tennis racket.

I shook my head irritably, and stared at the bank. A light was burning over the vault in the rear, and I could see the layout of the whole room through the glass doors in front of me. The over-all depth would be about fifty feet, and the side door which came in off the cross street was well back, not over twenty feet this side of the vault and the door which probably led into a washroom or closet of some kind. I turned my head and tried to picture about where the old Taylor building would be from here. Down one block, I thought, and two to the right, which would put it diagonally in front of the bank. That was about right. About right for what? I cursed and threw away the cigarette I was smoking and got out to stand on the sidewalk.

I was too restless and irritable to think of eating, so I started walking aimlessly up the sidewalk through the crowd. Up in the next block I went past the drugstore and as I glanced in through the window I saw Gloria Harper in front of the magazine racks. Without stopping to wonder why, I opened the screen door and went in.

She was still absorbed in the magazines and didn’t see me.

“Hello,” I said.

She glanced up abruptly. “Oh, hello, Mr. Madox.” She didn’t smile, but there was nothing unfriendly in the way she looked at me.

“How about a soda?”

She considered it thoughtfully. “Why, yes. Thank you.”

She paid the clerk for the magazine and we went back to one of the booths across from the fountain.

“First,” I said, “I’m sorry about the other day. I must have had the book open at the wrong place.”

The violet eyes glanced up at me, and then became confused and looked away. “It’s all right,” she said.

“Then you’re not mad at me?”

She shook her head. “Not any more.”

“That’s fine,” I said. “Now we can start even again. Next time I’ll read the instructions on the bottle. What do you do around here on Saturday nights?”

“Not much. There’s just the movie. And sometimes a dance, but not this week.”

“How about going swimming, then?”

“I’d like to, but I couldn’t tonight. I’m baby-sitting.”

“You must be a big operator, with two jobs. What’re you trying to do, get rich?”

“No, it’s just in the family. I’m staying with my sister’s little girl so she and her husband can go to the movies.”

“Oh. Well, I’ll drive you out there.”

“It’s only five or six blocks.”

“I’ll drive you anyway.”

She smiled. “Well, all right. Thank you.”

I watched her while she finished the soda, thinking of that odd gravity about everything she did, and the way she always said “Thank you,” instead of just “Thanks.” A sweet kid from a nice family, you’d say; probably teaches a Sunday-school class and goes steady with some guy in his last year at law school. The only hitch was—where did Sutton fit in? How about the way he’d looked at her, with that secret and very dirty joke of his? It was impossible, and still there it was.

She told me how to get there and we drove out Main, going north past the used-car lot. I asked her a little about herself, and she told me she’d lived around here most of her life except for a couple of years away at school. Her mother and father had moved to California and she was living with her sister and brother-in-law. I slipped over a couple of oblique questions, looking for a steady boy friend, but she let them slide off without saying one way or the other. She didn’t wear any engagement ring, though. I looked.

It was a small white house on a graveled side street, complete with a white picket fence and a young tree in the yard. “Won’t you come in?” she asked.

Why not? “Sure,” I said. “Thanks.”

There were no street lights, but the moon was waxing, and higher now, and I could see the dark shadow of vines growing along the fence and over the porch. The air was heavy and sweet with something I hadn’t smelled for a long time, and after the second breath I knew it was honeysuckle. To make it perfect, I thought, the gate should drag a little and need to be listed to open it. It did.

All the lights were off and they were sitting on the porch steps. When they saw there was somebody with her, they reached inside the front door and turned on the porch light. The sister was a slightly older version of Gloria, a little heavier, maybe, and having gray eyes instead of the startling violet. They were friendly, but a little embarrassed, like people who didn’t get around very much. Gloria introduced me. His name was Robinson, and he was a slightly built man around my age with thinning yellow hair and rimless glasses.

“Mr. Madox is the new salesman at the lot,” Gloria said.

“And apprentice baby-sitter,” I added, clowning a little to break the ice. We shook hands.