Puzzle for Fiends (8 page)

Something white—a handkerchief—fluttered across the face. The smell of lavender flew from it like moths.

“Gordy,” she moaned. “Where’s my Gordy?”

She turned from the bed.

“Come back,” I breathed.

She didn’t seem to notice. She started away. I could hear the shamble of her bedroom slippers across the carpet.

“Hey,” I called in an urgent whisper. “Come back. Please come back.”

But the bedroom slippers shambled on. I heard the faint squeak of the door opening and closing.

She was gone.

For a moment I lay back against the pillows, my heart racing.

You're not Gordy Friend. They lied to me.

Now that she was gone, I could hardly believe in that unknown old hag. She seemed like the materialization of my own amorphous suspicions.

They said my Gordy’d come back. They lied to me. You’re just one of Selena’s...

I turned to the other bed. Selena’s hair gleamed motionless in the moonlight.

“Selena,” I called. “Selena.”

She stirred slightly.

“Selena.”

“Yes, darling.” The words were slurred, reluctant, coming from half sleep.

“Selena.”

“Yes, yes, I hear you, baby.”

“Selena, wake up.”

She started into a sitting position, rubbing her eyes, tossing back her hair.

“What... Who... Oh, Gordy, Gordy, baby, yes. What is it?”

“That woman,” I said. “That old, old woman. Who is she?”

“Old woman?” She yawned. “What old woman, dear?”

“The old woman. She just came in here. I woke up. I found her bending over me. Who is she?”

Selena sat for a moment saying nothing. Then she murmured: “Baby, I haven’t the slightest idea what you’re talking about.”

“An old woman,” I persisted. “Who’s the old woman who lives in this house?”

“Mimsey? Really, I don’t think anyone would call her an old woman.”

“I don’t mean her. Of course I don’t.”

“Then you don’t mean anyone, baby. There’s no old woman in this house.”

“But there must be. She was wearing bedroom slippers. She…”

Selena suddenly burst out laughing. It was a deep, pulsing laugh. “You poor baby, you’ve been dreaming. Dreaming of old hags in bedroom slippers. What a depressing mind you must have.”

“I wasn’t dreaming,” I said. “I saw her as plainly as I see you.”

“Baby. Don’t worry your poor head. It’s only the drugs and things. You’re simply stuffed full of drugs, darling. Probably, if you tried, you could see a moose.”

She pushed back the covers and slipped out of her bed, coming to mine. She sat close to me, warm from sleep. She slid her arms around me and kissed my forehead, drawing my head down to her breast.

“There, baby. Selena will protect you from predatory old women in bedroom slippers.”

Nothing could have been more restful, more to be trusted than those smooth arms and the soft hair brushing my cheek. But the hair seemed like the hair in my dreams, suffocating me.

“Over?” she asked at length. “Is the old woman over and done with, baby?”

“I guess so,” I lied. “Thanks, Selena. Sorry I woke you up.”

“Darling.”

She patted my hand and slipped off my bed. Before she got into her own, she gave a little laugh, pulled open the drawer of the table by her bedside and took out a revolver. She dangled it for me to see.

“There, darling, your own gun. Next time you see an old hag, scream and I’ll shoot.”

She threw the gun back in the drawer and slid into bed, yawning: “ ’Night, Gordy.”

“’Night, Selena.”

She had confused me. After she had left, I lay trying to think. I was sick. I was full of drugs. It was just possible that the whole scene had been some bizarre illusion. I forced myself to remember every detail of that moment when I had awakened and seen the face looming over mine. I knew just how terrifically important it was to decide once and for all whether there had or hadn’t been an old woman.

If there had been an old woman, the old woman had said I was not Gordy Friend. If there had been an old woman, Selena had deliberately lied to me. And if Selena had lied to me, then the whole situation surrounding me was a monstrous tissue of lies.

The faintest scent of lavender trailed up to me. I glanced down. Something white was gleaming on the spread. I picked it up.

It was a woman’s handkerchief, a small, plain, old woman’s handkerchief.

And it smelt of lavender.

I put
the handkerchief in the pocket of my pajama jacket, hiding it under the big one Jan had brought me. I knew I had to keep steady. That was about the only definite thought I had at that moment.

You—whoever you are—keep steady.

The room, washed in moonlight, seemed particularly beautiful. Selena, blonde and insidious as the moonlight, was lying in the next bed, asleep or pretending to be asleep. Part of me was rash and yearned to call her name, to have her come over again, to feel the warmth of her bare arms around me. But I fought against it. I didn’t even look at the other bed. Because I knew now that Selena was false.

That was how this new, huge anxiety first came to me. The old woman had existed. Selena had tried to make her into a dream. Selena had lied. Selena had lied because if she had admitted the existence of the old woman then I would have demanded to see her and the old woman would say again what she had already said:

You are not Gordy Friend.

I repeated those words in my mind. With the ominous clarity that comes to the wakeful invalid at night, I knew then quite definitely that I was not Gordy Friend. My instincts had always known it. But there had been nothing tangible to support them until the arrival of this flimsy, lavender-scented handkerchief.

I was not Gordy Friend.

Strangely calm, I faced this preposterous truth. I was lying in a beautiful room in a luxurious house which I had been told was my own. It was not my own. I was nursed and petted by a woman who said she was my mother. She was not my mother. I was treated to reminiscences from an imaginary childhood by a girl who said she was my sister. She was not my sister. I was lured and made love to by a girl who said she was my wife. She was not my wife. My vague suspicions had been lulled whenever I voiced them by the plausible psychiatric pretenses of a doctor who said he was my friend.

Friend. In that calm, moonlit room, the word seemed inimitably sinister. They called themselves Friend. They called me Friend. They were constantly soothing me with the sickly sweet sedative of their sentence:
We're your friends.

They weren’t my friends. They were my enemies. This wasn’t a calm, moonlit room. It was a prison.

I was sure of that because there could be no other explanation. At least four people were banded together to persuade me that I was Gordy Friend. Mothers, sisters and wives do not embrace an impostor as a son, brother and husband, doctors do not risk their reputations on a lie—except for some desperately important reason. The Friends had some desperate motive for wanting to produce a make-believe Gordy Friend. And I was their victim.

Victim. The word, falling on my mind, was chilling as the touch of the unknown old woman’s hand on my cheek.

For all their cloying kindliness, I was the Friends’ victim, the sacrificial lamb being petted and pampered in preparation for—what sacrifice?

Selena’s voice, low and cautious, sounded through the extreme quiet of the room.

“Gordy. Gordy, baby.”

I lay still, I did not answer.

“Gordy, are you awake?”

I could feel the pulses in my temples throbbing against the bandages.

“Gordy.”

I heard her bedclothes being softly pulled back. I heard the faint scuffle of her feet pushing into slippers, then her tiptoeing footsteps. For a moment she came into the range of my vision, slender, graceful, her hair gleaming. She was bending over my bed, staring down at me. There was something purposeful, calculating about her. It was a bitter sensation being half in love with an enemy.

After a long moment she turned and moved away from the bed. I heard the door open and close carefully behind her.

I couldn’t follow her to find out where she was going. It was that one little fact which brought home to me my extreme helplessness. I was more than a victim, I was an immobilized victim with a broken leg and arm, a victim without a sporting chance to escape.

I was a victim with a broken mind too. As I took stock of my predicament, that fact loomed above all the others. I knew I was not Gordy Friend, but I had not the faintest idea of who I was. I struggled to make something of the few, feeble hints that drifted in my mind like dead flies in a jar of water. The irises, a sailor, propellers, Peter, the dog... Peter… For a second, I seemed on the brink of something. Then it was over. I felt dizzy from the effort of concentration. There was no help from memory. I had nothing to help me except my own wits.

I was really on my own.

Not quite on my own. For I realized that I had two potential allies. The old woman knew I was not Gordy Friend and was ready to admit it. If somehow I could contact the old woman,

I might at least find out who I was. It would be difficult, of course, because the Friends were obviously keeping her from me. But there was someone to whom I did have access—Netti with the red-veined gums. I would have to move warily. If I let the Friends know that my suspicions were anything more than an invalid’s hazy vagaries, I would have played and lost my only trump card. But perhaps, carefully, through Netti…

My mind, so recently free from the influence of sedatives, was easily tired. I felt spent, incapable of coping with the situation any more. Netti’s white maid’s cap started to spin around in my mind like a pin-wheel.

I was asleep before Selena came back.

I awakened, as I had awakened the morning before, with warm sunlight splashing across my face. I opened my eyes. The gay luxury of the room betrayed me. Selena was lying asleep in the next bed. I could just see the curve of her cheek on the pillow behind the shimmering fair hair. She was as warm and desirable in the sunlight as she had been cool and insidious in the moonlight. I wanted her to be my real wife, I wanted to pretend everything was all right.

For a moment, because I wanted it to so much, the elaborate edifice of logic that I had built up in the night seemed a morbid fantasy. It was true that Selena had lied about the old woman. But, even if Selena was trying to prove she didn’t exist, why should I take the old woman’s word that I was not Gordy Friend? Perhaps she was crazy and Selena was keeping her existence from me out of consideration for an invalid. Or perhaps her old eyes were dim and in the moonlight she had made an honest mistake. The bandages alone might easily have confused her.

How pleasant it would be to forget my doubts and relax. How pleasant to be Gordon Renton Friend the Third.

The faint odor of lavender drifted up from my pajama pocket. Its effect was tonic as a cold shower. Selena had lied. Until I could explain that away, I had to be on my guard. I would have to start to plan too. There was no time to lose. For all I knew, time might be a crucial factor in this battle of wits against the Friends.

The door opened. I was hoping it would be Netti with my breakfast. But it was Marny. She was wearing Chinese pajamas and her feet were bare. Her glossy black hair was tousled from sleep. She strolled to the bed and sat down cross-legged at the foot by my cast.

“ ’lo, Gordy. Anything good in the Amnesiac’s Gazette this morning?”

She grinned, watching me from insolvent brown eyes. She was so young that she was attractive even though she was obviously straight from bed and had made no attempt to fix herself up. In spite of what I now knew, it seemed almost impossible to suspect the disarming candor of her gaze.

She glanced scornfully at Selena. “Selena. She sleeps like a cow.”

She stretched over me, picked up Selena’s cigarette case from the bedside table and lit a cigarette. She stayed half across me supporting herself with one hand.

“Well, Gordy, how did the night treat you?”

“Roughly.” It was a risk but I took it. “An old woman burst in on me. By the way, who is she? My grandmother?”

Selena was suddenly awake, so suddenly that I wondered if she had really been asleep. She sat up in bed, smiling at us dazzlingly.

“Hi, Marny. Morning, Gordy, baby. Still fiddling around with that old woman?”

She slid out of her bed and came to mine, sitting down on the spread across from Marny. Lazily she kissed me on the cheek. I wanted desperately not to be excited by her nearness.

“You didn’t really believe me last night, did you, baby?” She glanced at Marny. “Poor Gordy had a frightful dream about a hag with a stringy neck. He’s sure she really exists. Tell him we don’t have any old crones locked up in the attic.”

“Old crones?” Marny puffed smoke at me. “I’m sorry, Gordy. No crones.”

She spoke casually but I caught an almost imperceptible flicker of understanding in the glance she exchanged with Selena. With a sinking heart, I was sure then that she had been primed. That must have been one of the things Selena did last night when she slipped out of the room. It had been so important to keep me from knowing about the old woman that Selena had woken the others up and warned them.

Just as I couldn’t stop being excited by Selena, I couldn’t kid myself any longer, either. She was my enemy. They were all my enemies.

“What did she say to you?” Marny looked down at her knee, brushing idly at a piece of lint on the red silk. “The old hag in the dream, I mean?”

I wasn’t falling into that trap.

“Nothing,” I lied. “She just seemed to be there and then floated away. You know how it is with dreams.”

“So you realize she was a dream now?” asked Selena.

“Sure.”

“Darling.”

She leaned toward me, kissing me again. I was scared she would smell lavender and realize that I had in my pocket definite evidence that the old woman wasn’t a dream.

But she didn’t seem to notice anything. In fact, she seemed exhilarated as if she had scored a victory.

Knowing she would lie, I said: “And how did you sleep, Selena?”