Puzzle for Fiends (7 page)

Dr. Croft’s lips were stretched again, but this time the reassuring smile looked a bit sickly. “Even the doctor wasn’t prepared for it, Gordy. So you see you can’t blame yourself.” He turned to my mother. “Well, Mrs. Friend, this is a lot of fun, but a doctor’s a doctor. There’s a pile of work ahead of me still.” He took my left hand in his, letting his warm, smooth fingers linger there. “I think we’ve got you straightened out now, eh, Gordy?”

“I guess,” I said.

A shadow of annoyance passed across his face as if he felt I wasn’t convinced and it wounded his professional pride.

“If the feeling keeps up,” he said stiffly, “we’ll get a second opinion. There’s no reason why you should have confidence in me.”

He made me feel I had been pointlessly crass. I said: “Sure I have confidence in you, Nate.”

“You do? After all, it’s kind of silly thinking of us as enemies. We’re your friends, you know.”

He smiled. So did my mother.

“We’re your friends, aren’t we, darling?” she repeated.

“Sure,” I said. “Sure, you’re my friends.”

“Take it
easy, Gordy. Don’t force anything. You’ll be all right. ’Night now. ’Night, Mrs. Friend.”

Nate Croft moved to the door. My mother looked down at me and then, as if suddenly remembering something, she rose hurriedly and followed the doctor out of the room.

Although she was supposed to be nursing me, she didn’t come back. No one came for a long time. I started feeling sleepy. The little gold travelling clock on the bedside table eventually said eleven o’clock. I thought of leaning over and turning out the light but I felt too lazy to make the effort.

Dr. Croft’s words, in retrospect, were reassuring. He had suggested a second opinion. No phony doctor would have done that. I was forgetting my doubts. The pillows were soft. I shut my eyes. I was drifting off into some fanciful half dream when I realized the door was opening. Lifting my lids the fraction of an inch, I looked through my lashes.

Selena had tiptoed in. She moved toward my bed. I don’t know why I feigned sleep, but I did. She paused at my side and looked down at me, studying my features with a long, speculative stare.

Squinting as I was, her image was blurred. I could see the cream hair gleaming in the subdued light, hear her light breathing and smell her perfume, warm and faint, a summer meadow perfume that seemed to catch the very essence of her free, country beauty.

Satisfied that I was asleep, she stretched voluptuously, her breasts sprouting upward. She half turned away, reached behind her back for buttons and pulled the white dress off over her head. She tossed the dress carelessly onto the chaise longue, and kicked off her shoes.

Humming very softly, she moved to the french windows, tugged back the heavy drapes and stood staring out. The glittering California moonlight, streaming around her, turned her hair silver and gave her skin the bluish delicacy of milk. The picture she made was so entrancing that I forgot I was supposed to be asleep.

“Hello, Selena,” I said.

She turned, the hair swirling around her bare shoulders. She came to my bed, sat down and took my hand, quite unembarrassed. She smiled her vivid smile.

“Baby, I thought you were asleep.”

She leaned over me, kissing me on the lips, relaxing against me. Once again, her nearness brought summer images. Hayfields. Soft, warm sand with the faint murmur of waves. When Selena was near, only the thoughts she conjured up existed. Everything else dissolved.

“Where’ve you been all evening?” I asked.

She shifted her head on my chest. Her face was so close that I could feel her lashes fluttering against mine. “Miss me, baby?”

“Sure I missed you. What were you doing?”

“Oh, nothing,” she shrugged. “Nothing delirious. Just bridge. Mimsey adores it and she’s only just been able to play again. It was far too sinful for your father. Just the four of us. Mimsey, Marny, me and Nate.”

“Nate? I thought he had to go to another patient. That’s what he said.”

Her laugh was rich, husky. “I know, darling, but Mimsey wanted a fourth so I persuaded him to stay. Didn’t Mimsey give you a sleeping thing?”

I shook my head.

She kissed me. “Mimsey fancies herself as a nurse. Personally I’d think twice about letting her loose on a sick baboon. Never mind, baby. I’ll be here for the rest of the night. If you want anything—shout.”

“Anything?” I let my hand stray over her glossy shoulder.

“In time, baby. In time.” She grinned and fell back on the bed, staring up at the ceiling. “Oh, life is such fun. Why do people have complexes and things? Why don’t they do what they want when they want and wallow in life instead of glooming around in Clean Living Leagues, with warts on their noses and smelly breath? Sleepy, baby?”

“No.”

“Want to start remembering things?”

“No.”

“What do you want to do?”

“Just this.”

“Baby!’ She took my head between both her hands. “You,” she said studying me. “Your jaw’s right. You smell nice. You’ve got real arms. Your lips are so—serviceable. You and your plaster of Paris.”

She kissed me again, pressing herself almost fiercely against me. The spell of her was like a drug. I had seen her only twice to remember and yet I was already feeling as if I must always have wanted her in my life. It was a strange, rather frightening sensation—not like remembered love, rougher than that, a sort of hunger and a simultaneous desire to resist. Because something in me, something very weak, was still trying to warn me.

Steady
, it said.
You don't know who your friends are.

I didn’t pay it much attention. All my thoughts were with Selena.

“I’m crazy about you, baby,” I said, hardly realizing I had spoken the words out loud.

“I know you are.” She gave a soft laugh in which there was a faint ring of triumph. “Of course you are, Gordy. You always were.”

Abruptly she pulled herself away from me. She picked up the empty pack of cigarettes, said “damn” and, crossing to her tumbled dress, pulled a thin platinum case out of the deep side pocket. She came back to the bed, lit two cigarettes at once and handed me one.

“Like in the movies,” she said. She puffed smoke, enjoying it. “Baby, I’ve got an idea. A wonderful idea. About your memory.”

“To hell with my memory,” I said.

“No, baby. Listen. Please. Your father’s poems. For years and years, ever since you started to drink and heaven knows how long that’s been—whenever you went on a toot, your father made you learn by heart and recite one of his poems against drink. I’ll make you learn one again. Don’t you see? Association and things. It’s bound to be frightfully, frightfully therapeutical.”

“I don’t want to learn a poem against drink,” I said.

“Darling, don’t be dreary. “She got up again, fumbled in a bureau drawer and brought out a drab grey volume with gilt lettering. Casually, as if it didn’t matter one way or the other, she pulled an oyster white negligée from a closet and slipped into it. She sat down on the green chaise longue.

“All published privately. At terrific expense.” She leafed through the book. “Ah, here’s my favorite.
The Ode to Aurora.
It’s divine. Disinfected Swinburne. Baby, you’ve learned this one fifty times. It must be needlepointed on your heart.” She looked up laughing. “Darling, I’m much smarter than Nate. You see.”

I was bored. I wanted her to come back to the bed.

“Ready?” she said. “I’ll read the first verse. Then you learn it.”

“Okay,” I said. “Give with the disinfected Swinburne.”

In a voice croaky with mock evangelical fervor, she recited:

“ ‘Seven sins led our sons to Perdition,

Seven sins that lure youth like a whore.

And the first of them all—(Prohibition

Alas can repress it no more)—

Is alcohol, weevil-like borer,

Only one can combat its foul stealth.

That’s sober and saintly Aurora,

Clean Lady of Health.’ ”

She looked up. “Isn’t it heaven, darling? He doesn’t mean the Greek Aurora, of course. She was a frightful cut-up, sleeping with shepherds on mountains and things. This is all written to the Aurora Clean Living League of St. Paul, Minnesota.” Her eyes clouded earnestly. “Don’t you remember any of it, baby?”

“No,” I said. “Fortunately.”

“Oh, baby.” She grimaced. “Really, you’re awfully tiresome. Never mind. Learn it. Maybe that’ll help.”

She reread the first two lines. I repeated them. The rhythm made it easy to learn by heart. But it brought absolutely no recollection.

“How did we ever recite it without laughing out loud?” I asked.

“Laughing?” Selena looked horrified. “My dear, you wouldn’t ask that if you remembered your father. He was simply terrifying. You were more scared of him than any of us—except maybe Marny. That’s why you got drunk really. It was the only way you could feel brave. Want to try the next verse?”

“No,” I said.

She leaned forward coaxingly. “Gordy, baby, please—just one more.”

“Okay.”

“This is really my pet verse.”

She started to read:

“ ‘In the taverns where young people mingle

To sway their lascivious hips,

The youths with sin’s wages to jingle

At the maidens with stains on their lips.

Smoke rises like fumes from Baal’s altar,

Ragtime drums like a plague in their blood.

Oh, come and rend off its lewd halter,

Our Lady of Good.’ ”

I learned that verse too. Selena made me repeat both verses together. But nothing happened. Discouraged, Selena gave up and soon she was lying in the other bed.

“Night, baby.”

She leaned toward me, turning out the light between the beds. Her hand came through the moonlight, touching my cheek and caressing it. I kissed the soft, blue-white fingers.

“Night, Selena.”

“Won’t be long, will it?”

“What won’t be long?”

“The cast, baby.”

“I hope not, Selena.”

As I lay alone, drowsy but not really tired, the magic Selena cast began to fade and my old disquiet returned. I didn’t remember my father’s poems. I didn’t really remember Selena. I didn’t remember anything. A vision of Netti’s pink, red-veined gums swam in front of me. Somehow that peroxide maid with her weakness for gin-nipping and her giggled hints seemed the only normal, real person in the house. All the servants had been fired on the day my father died. Suddenly that one fact seemed to be the focus of everything that was wrong. “Selena?” I called.

Her voice, thickened by sleepiness, murmured: “Yes, baby?”

“Why did you fire all the servants when father died?”

“What?” Her voice was alert now.

“Why did you fire all the servants when father died?”

“My dear, what weird questions you ask.”

I had an absurd sensation that she was stalling.

“Please, baby. I want to know. It’s one of those things that stick in your mind,” I lied. “Maybe, if you tell it’ll help me remember.”

She laughed softly and her hand, stretched across again, rested on my pillow. I didn’t touch it. Somehow I didn’t want to.

“Baby, that’s frightfully simple. In the old days Father hired all the servants. My dear, you can’t imagine how spectral and dismal they were, creaking around in elastic boots and sniffing in drawers for contraband cigarettes. Your father paid them to spy on us. Firing them was our first act of emancipation. Mimsey did it. She was wonderful. She just swept them out like dead leaves.”

It was a soothing explanation. It fitted so well with the setup. I reached for her hand and squeezed it.

“Thanks, Selena.”

“Help you remember anything?”

“ ’Fraid not.”

“Damn. “Selena drew her hand back. “Night, baby.” After a moment she gave a little chuckle.

“What’s so funny?”

“I was just picturing how you’d look swinging lascivious hips in that plaster cast.”

Now that Selena had told me there was nothing sinister about the firing of the servants, the last lingering fumes of my suspicions were dispersed. For the first time that evening I felt an unqualified sense of well-being. There was no pain in my leg or my arm. My head didn’t ache. Sleep stole deliciously through me. My last conscious thought was:

I’m Gordy Friend. Selena’s my wife.

My last conscious act was to turn my head and look at her. She was lying with her back to me, the long line of her hip visible under the humped bedclothes. Her hair gleamed metallic on the pillow.

I dreamed of her hair. It should have been a wonderful dream but it wasn’t. The cream hair was tumbling over me, curling around my throat, smothering me.

I was awake suddenly. I knew I was awake because a hand was touching my cheek. My mind was quite clear. Selena, I thought. The touch was light, just the tips of the fingers moving gently across my skin. There was a faint perfume too. What was it? Lavender.

I didn’t open my eyes. Contentedly I raised my arm and imprisoned the hand in mine. The fingers weren’t smooth and soft like Selena’s. It was an old, old hand, bony, coarse and wrinkled like a lizard’s skin.

With a chill of disgust and horror, I dropped it. I opened my eyes wide. I stared up.

A figure was bending over me. The bright moonlight made its reality unquestionable. It was a female figure, short and dumpily shapeless in some black trailing garment.

Its face was less than a foot from mine. Lines splayed over cheeks dry as parchment. Eyes, round and luminous, in puckered sockets stared straight into mine. There was an odor of old age and lavender.

It had happened too quickly. I wasn’t ready for it. My skin started to crawl.

“Gordy. “The name was whispered in a subdued, croaking whine. “Gordy. My Gordy.”

“I’m Gordy,” I said.

“You!’ The peering eyes looked closer. The voice trembled with ancient, impotent rage. “You’re not Gordy. They said my Gordy’d come back. They lied to me. They always lie to me. You’re not Gordy. You’re just another of Selena’s...”

She broke off with a whimper.

I sat up, quivering. “What d’you mean? Who are you? Tell me.”