End of the Tiger (6 page)

Tiger said it was time to go and sent Sheila in to get Christine. Sheila came out in a few moments and said Christine had a headache and couldn’t go. Tiger hung around for a little while, acting sort of ugly. And then he went off, and the snarling drone of his car faded quickly. We went down to the pond. Gretchen was soiled and she had some broken feathers, but she looked unapproachably white there in the blue dusk, floating out in the middle, making no sound for us.

There were no more boat rides, no more preening the golden hair of the big sister, no more chuckling sound behind us when we walked across the yard, no more visits in the dusk. We told each other that if grandfather had let us help her before she became too terrified, it might have been all right, and we might have kept her trust.

We never quite forgave our grandfather for that. Maybe he wasn’t interested in our kind of forgiveness. He was a wild and random old man, and sometimes he made no sense at all. But when I saw Tiger the other day, I suddenly realized that if we’d helped Gretchen quickly, then it might have been just one of Tiger’s little jokes, and Christine would have gone off with him that night and other nights, and the world might be quite different for her now. By delaying us, grandfather showed her Tiger’s kind of laughter, of which there is often too much in the world.

But he never explained.

Erica, leaning forward from the back seat, told Mack where to turn. He was aware of the fragrance of her and thought he could feel the touch of her breath against the side of his throat. “Now just two more blocks, Mack, and it will be on the right with the porch lights on.” She hesitated over calling him Mack. When the evening had started, it had been Mr. Landers and Miss Holmes, Marie, beside Mack, leaned forward and punched the lighter in. Mack felt a mild amusement. Marie had gone a little sour on the evening.

It was a narrow street, down at the heels. The house was small, and Mack guessed it probably looked less defeated at night with the lights on than during the day.

He stopped, and Marie hitched toward him and pulled the back of her seat forward so that Quent and Erica could get out. Erica turned gravely once she was out of the car and said in her husky voice, “It was nice, people. Nice to meet you, Marie, and you, Mack. I hope I’ll see you soon again.”

“No doubt of that,” Quent said with that effervescence that had been his all evening. “Be right back,” he said.

They sat with the motor running. Quent walked Erica up to her door. Mack heard Marie sniff. He tapped a cigarette on the horn ring and lit it. “Pretty girl,” he said casually.

“Oh, sure,” Marie said.

“Don’t you like her, baby?”

“She’s just fine, Mack. Just absolutely fine. I haven’t had such a gay little evening since I was a Girl Reserve.” She imitated Erica’s voice, saying, “Just a little dry sherry, please. The music is quite loud here, isn’t it?”

Mack glanced at the porch. Erica and Quent were standing under the porch light. He saw them shake hands and nearly choked. “Like going back to when I was seventeen,” he said wonderingly. “No. Sixteen. By seventeen I wouldn’t let them get away with that.”

“You were a dog, of course,” Marie said.

Quent came striding back out to the car, got in beside Marie, and pulled the door shut. Mack started up fast, the powerful motor roaring in the quiet of the darkened street.

“How do you like her?” Quent asked eagerly.

“She seems like a very nice girl,” Marie said evenly.

“Nice kid,” Mack agreed.

“She’s really got me going,” Quent said. “I’m glad we all got along so good together. I was kind of afraid.”

“Afraid we’d be too coarse and worldly for the little dear?” Marie asked, an unpleasant note in her voice.

“Now don’t be like that, Marie,” Quent said. “You know I didn’t mean anything like that.”

“Then exactly what in hell are you talking about?” Marie demanded.

“Shut your pretty face, darling,” Mack said.

“I was afraid he was going to tell me she’s a
nice
girl,” Marie said.

“Look, it was a good evening,” Quent said. “Let’s break it off good.”

“Okay,” Marie said. “Nightcap at my place?”

“Not tonight,” Mack said. “Tomorrow is a working day. Landers and Dale have got stuff piled up. Right, kid?”

“Right, Mack,” Quent said.

Mack drove back toward town, parked in front of the blonde stone and glass apartment house where Marie lived on ample alimony. He got out, and Marie slid out on his side, and he said, “Back in a second, kid.”

He walked into the sterile tile lobby with Marie. He grinned at her. She was a sturdy blonde with shrewd eyes, good clothes, and a sulky mouth. They were easy with each other, and he knew she had learned that if she got rough, it was always a few weeks before he called her up again.

“Now we shake hands, maybe?” Marie asked. “An evening with sweet young stuff and you can’t even come up for a drink.”

“You want him up for a drink? You want to listen to him talk about love’s young dream for an hour perhaps?”

“Please. Not that.”

“Okay, so I drop him and come back for my drink. That makes better sense?”

Her slow smile came. She ran her fingertips down his cheek. “Mmm,” she said. “Good sense.”

“Within an hour, honey,” he said, and turned and walked out. His heels made loud firm noises on the tile, and as he pushed the front door open he heard the soft closing of the door of the self-service elevator. He walked out toward the car where he could see the glow of Quent’s cigarette. He got in and slammed the door and headed through town.

“I’m conversational,” Quent said. “Nightcap?”

“A short one.” The streets were empty, and he parked in front of The Alibi. They went in and sat at the curve of the bar. Mack tilted his hat back off his broad forehead. There was a party in one of the big booths—two girls and three men, all loud and out of focus.

“The usual, Joe,” Mack said. “What about you, Quent?”

“Just a beer, I guess. Millers is okay.” The bartender moved off. Quent said, “God, she’s a hell of a girl, Mack. Never met anything like her.”

“From the way you’ve been acting, kid, I knew you had something on your mind. How did you say you met her?”

“I didn’t. I didn’t want to be laughed at. You know that Dowling case I was working on, where she wanted to leave her money to the church. I called on her and she had a lady with her, a friend. While I was there Erica came in a car to pick up the other lady, and it turns out the lady is Erica’s aunt. Erica was in the east for a couple of years and she got homesick and came back out here. She lives with her aunt now and she’s got a part-time job at the library. She works mornings, but I guess I told you that already. What do you think of her, Mack?”

Mack lifted his drink and took a long slow sip. He glanced at his partner’s intent young face. “It’s really stacked,” he said casually. “I bet it would be fine.”

Quent turned sharply and frowned at him. Quent’s cheeks were red. “Damn it, that’s no way to talk.”

“Don’t get in an uproar, kid.”

“You can’t look at any woman in a decent way, can you?”

Mack grinned. “Sure. I’m an evil old man. Ask anybody.”

Quent finally smiled, reluctantly. “All right. You were kidding me. Seriously, I’m thinking in terms of marriage, Mack. It’s time, I think.”

“I was married once,” Mack said. “It is, indeed, a very unpromising relationship.”

“You had bad luck.”

Mack thought of all the implications. He took a few sips of his drink, slid the glass a few inches along the bar top, and examined the wet streak it left.

“Do I have to like the idea?” he asked softly.

“What do you mean?”

“Look, kid. The business is growing. And you know why. We both draw peanuts and put the rest back into the firm. We’re hot. Equal partners. Look at the picture. You get married. You have to draw more. It stands to reason. You draw more, and I have to draw more, or else let the firm owe me. So what happens to the plans? We start leveling off. We don’t grow any more. The answer is we have an outfit that gives us both a nice comfortable living. But is that enough? I thought we had the idea of really getting big. Marriage in five years, Quent. Fine, I’d say. But right now … hell, you can see how I feel.”

“She’d understand that, Mack. She really would. She’s smart. You can tell that. We draw a hundred apiece right now. We could stay within that.”

“For five years? You and she and your three kids? Life doesn’t work that way. If she’s that smart, she’s going to know what we’re netting, kid. And she’s going to start resenting the way we keep ploughing it back in. She’s going to wonder why she has to take it easy during the good years so that she can have more dough later on when she won’t enjoy it so much. Kitties love the cream, kid.”

“I can’t help it, Mack. I’ve … got to marry her.”

“Name it after me.”

“Damn it, you always twist things around.”

“Take it easy, Quent. Anyway, how much do you know about this girl? I’m only eight years older than you, but by God, sometimes I feel forty years older. Marriage lasts a long time. At least it’s supposed to. Don’t rush into it. How long have you known her, anyway?”

“Six weeks, Mack.”

“Know a girl six months and marry her and it’s still fast. I always have to keep slowing you up. You know that. Remember the Berton deal? That could have been a real jam if I let you go ahead the way you wanted to.” Mack tossed off the rest of his drink and stood up. “Finish your beer, Quent. I’m bushed.”

They went back out to the car, and Mack dropped Quent off at his small apartment, headed on east as though going to his place, then circled and went back to Marie’s apartment.

He sat in his car for a time without going in. He lit a cigarette and smoked it slowly, frowning ahead through the windshield at the dark street. A city bus hissed to a stop, let a man off, waddled off down the street.

From what Quent had said about her he had expected Erica Holmes to be Miss Anemia. A bloodless and bifocaled thing with elfin mannerisms. Quent wasn’t noted for his taste in women. But Erica had been a thing to stir the blood. Every time, during the evening, when she had been close to him, the backs of Mack’s hands had tingled. She was a grave brunette, her hair so dark it looked almost blue under lights. She had tilted gray eyes, that husky voice, and a body suitable for a calendar in any repair shop. But it was more than that, he knew. It was a certain aura, an invisible emanation of desirability that could be felt ten feet away from her and increased in geometric proportion as he got closer. And she obviously had the kid mumbling to himself. He thought of one little incident during the evening. When he had danced with her, she had become rigid each time he tried to pull her closer. And once, when dancing, her fingertips had accidentally brushed the nape of his neck, and they had felt like ice. He sat, eyes narrowed, thinking. He got out, flicked his cigarette away, and walked
slowly toward the lobby entrance, separating the proper key from the others.

Mack was at his desk when Quent came in, whistling. Mack saw Mrs. Ober slant a speculative glance at Quent, and he knew that Mrs. Ober was not deceived. Prior to Erica, Quent had been a young man who never came in whistling. Mack had coldly selected Quent for the fine intuitive quality of his intelligence. The younger man was not the sort of person with whom Mack felt most at ease. Mack thought of Erica for a time, and then sighed and turned back to the work on his desk.

At eleven o’clock Mack went out. As he waited for the elevator he turned and looked at the door of the reception room. Landers and Dale. It had started three years ago in one crummy office, just he and the kid and Mrs. Ober. Five rooms now, and four people working for them. Another five years and they’d have the whole floor. Ten years and they might have their own building. Crazier things had happened. The kid hadn’t been pulling full weight the past six weeks.

Mack went out and walked five blocks to the public library. He went into the main desk and asked for Miss Holmes. Erica Holmes. The girl at the main desk told him she was in the reference room, the door to the right. He walked through into the sunlit silence. A few people frowned up at him as his metal-tipped heels struck hard against the wooden floor. Mack looked at them blandly. Erica was behind a semicircular desk in the corner. She wore glasses with heavy rims. As she looked up at him, smiling without too much enthusiasm, he saw that the lenses did not distort her eyes at all. Probably a very minor correction. She wore a black skirt, a white blouse with starched cuffs and collar.

“Good morning,” she said in a low voice. “I had a lovely time last night.”

“I wanted to see you in your natural habitat, Erica.”

She raised her eyebrows. “Yes?”

“And maybe see how natural it is.”

She tilted her head a bit on one side. “What does that mean, Mack?”

He looked at her mouth. Wide and soft and firm, lips
lying evenly together. He said, “Just making jokes. Poor ones, I guess. Did you do library work when you were back east?”

“No.”

“Just that? No.”

“Is this some sort of an inquisition, Mr. Landers? If so, I’ll have to ask you to excuse me. I’m really quite busy.”

He grinned. “I feel like a father to the kid. You know how it is.”

“Please don’t talk so loudly. You’re disturbing the whole room.”

“Buy you lunch?”

“No thank you.”

“Have I said something wrong?”

“Please, Mack. You’ll get me in trouble here.”

“Come on out by the front steps a minute then.”

“I can’t.”

“Then we’ll talk here.”

Her lips tightened. Her knuckles were white against the edge of the desk. “I’ll be out in a couple of minutes.”

He walked out onto the front steps, leaned against the front of the building, and lit a cigarette. It was a good five minutes before she came out. She looked angry.

“What
is
this all about, Mack?”

He looked into the gray eyes, saw them slide uneasily away. “I guess you misunderstood me, Erica. Hell, I was just being friendly. Quent told me you worked here mornings, and I had a call and I was going by, so I stopped in. That Quent, he’s a fine boy, don’t you think?”