Charles Williams: Hell Hath No Fury

She didn’t need any more, but I reached down beside the bed for the bottle. Anything to get her to shut up, I thought. The bottle was empty.

“There’s not any more,” I said.

“The hell there’s not. What became of it?”

“Maybe it leaks,” I said wearily.

“Nuts. We got to have a drink.” She sat up in bed and climbed out unsteadily, whisky-and-cologne smelling and sexy, bosom aswing, and humming “You’d Be So Easy To Love,” under her breath. “I got some more hid in the kitchen. Have to keep it hid from him because he don’t drink and won’t let me, when he’s home. Him and his lousy ulcers.”

I heard her bump into something in the living room and swear. She had a bos’n’s vocabulary. My head felt worse and I wondered why I didn’t get out of there. She was already on the edge of being sloppy drunk, kittenish one minute and belligerent the next. God knows I’ve always had some sort of affinity for gamey babes, but she was beginning to be a little rough even for me. She had a lot of talent, but it was highly specialized and when you began to get up to date in that field you were wasting your time just hanging around for the conversation. You could do without it.

In a few minutes she came back carrying what looked like a tray of ice cubes and another bottle of whisky. She set the ice cubes on the dresser and I could see her fumbling around on the top of it for something.

“Harry, we’re going to have a drink,” she said thickly.

“Good old Harry ... Harry is a girl’s best friend…Oh, where’d I put those dam cigarettes? Harry, switch on that light, will you? I got to have a smoke.”

I reached up and turned on the reading lamp. She found what she was looking for and turned around, the cigarette hanging out of her mouth and that gold chain around her ankle, looking at me with a lazy, half-drunken smile.

“Harry, you don’t think I’m fat, do you?”

Here we go again, I thought. “No,” I said.

She smiled again. “Well, you sure ought to know.” She had the bottle of whisky in her hands and was trying to twist the cap off. She paused for a moment, apparently thinking hard about something, and laughed. “Say, you really had a nerve, didn’t you?”

“Why?”

“Coming into the house the way you did. And right into my room.”

Maybe it was risky, I thought. I might have got caught in the traffic.

“What would you of done if I’d screamed?”

“I don’t know,” I said. “Run, I suppose.”

“But you didn’t think I would, did you?”

“I didn’t know.”

“But you was pretty sure of it, wasn’t you?” There was a little edge to her voice.

“I told you I didn’t know.”

“The hell you didn’t.” She quit working on the bottle and glared at me. “I know what you thought. And you know what?”

“What?”

“I don’t give a damn. What do you know about that?”

“Oh, knock it off,” I said.

“I know what you think, all right.”

“You said that.”

“Think I’m some lousy tramp that you can walk right into her room, will you? Well, I’ll tell you what you can do—“

“You’re drunk,” I said. “Why don’t you shut up?”

“Shut up, will I? Why don’t you make me?”

“Who hasn’t?” I said.

The bottle slid out of her hands. She picked up the tray of ice cubes and let fly. It bounced off my ribs and ice slid all over me. I got off the bed and started for her. She was a sight, arm drawn back and bristling with drunken rage and as nude as a calendar girl. I grabbed her arm and swung her, and she shot backwards and fell across the bed. All the fight went out of her and she crumpled and began to cry.

“Harry,” she sobbed, turning on her back and looking up at me with her eyes swimming.” Where you going, Harry?”

“Nuts,” I said.

The moon was almost down now, and the streets were deserted and dark with shadow. Two blocks away on Main a car went past now and then, but here beside the old Taylor building there was no light or movement. I stopped and stared at it, trying to fight off the disgust and the headache and escape the cloying perfume.

Across the weed-filled vacant lot on this side, next to the cross street, I could just make out the small window at the rear, the one I had unlocked. It might be weeks or months before anybody discovered it and fastened the latch. I had plenty of time to make up my mind about it, but what was I waiting for? Didn’t I know what was going to happen as surely as sunrise if I went on living in the same town with that sexy lush?

Oh, sure, I’d stay away from her, all right. Didn’t I always? What was my batting average so far in staying out of trouble when it was baited with that much tramp? It was an even zero, and I didn’t see anything in the situation here that promised I’d improve very much. And the way she soaked up the booze, and as crazy as she was when she was drunk, she was about as safe to be mixed up with in a town like this as a rattlesnake. You didn’t know what she’d do.

The smart thing was to get out of here and let her happen to somebody else.

But I had to wait, unless I wanted to give up the idea which was going around in my mind. It would take at least a month. No, it would take longer, because you couldn’t just come in here, pull off something like that, and then run. It would put the finger on you. I looked at the building again. It was perfect for what I wanted—unoccupied, and not too near any of the few inhabited shacks along the street. The only hitch was that I had to get into it and out again without being seen, when the time came, and now the moon was working against me. I couldn’t take a chance on it until it started to wane, unless we happened to get an overcast or a rainy night. There were two or three shacks on the opposite side of the cross street which had a view of the side of the building, and you could never tell when somebody might be awake and looking out from one of them.

I went on back to the rooming house and lay awake a long time still thinking about it. Sometime before I dropped off I got to wondering what was on that street next to the bank, the one the side door opened on to. I had been right there on the corner a couple of times, but I couldn’t remember. If there were a store on the opposite side with a door or show windows facing the side of the bank it would be too dangerous. That was something I had to find out before I could even consider it, but it could wait until morning.

The next day was Sunday. I awoke around ten with a hang-over and feeling as if I’d been beaten up in a fight, listless and only half alive. I went downtown for some orange juice and coffee, bought a paper at the drugstore, and then walked slowly around the whole block the bank was on.

It was all right. In fact, it was very good. The cross street was blind as far as seeing the side door of the bank was concerned. There was a store across there, all right, but it faced only on Main and this side was a blank brick wall. I went on around, as if out for an aimless Sunday morning stroll. Directly behind the bank there was an alley cutting all the way through the block, and where it came out into the next street the only business establishments again faced on Main. All right, I thought; so far, so good.

Tuesday, when the draft had gone through, I went back to the bank and cashed a check for fifty dollars. While I was inside I looked it over again, very thoroughly. There were four men at work, one in each of the two cages, an officer of some kind at the railed-in desk, and a book-keeper busy over the tabulating machines. They were all young or in early middle age except the Mr. Chips type I’d talked to before. He would be the one who’d always get left there because he was too old and frail to belong to the volunteer fire department. The door at the rear was partly open this time and I could see it led into a washroom, all right. And it opened inward.