The Best of Everything (54 page)

At the bottom of the middle drawer, under a pile of clean white shirts, Gregg found several envelopes. They looked as if they had

been tossed there, not hidden, by someone who was untidy rather than secretive. She Hstened for a moment to the sound of the shower and then opened the envelopes. One contained a photostatic copy of David Wilder Savage's birth certificate and his passport. She looked at these, especially the passport picture, and she was sorry she had not known him then. Even those years that he had lived and worked and traveled and been in love without her made her jealous.

Three of the other envelopes contained letters, and one held photographs. She looked at the photographs first. They were all of the same person, a young man whom she did not know but who looked definitely familiar, and then Gregg realized who it was. It was Gordon McKay, David's friend, who was dead. They were merely snapshots that could have been taken anywhere, two taken indoors and therefore hard to make out, one outdoors in the country, and one with a girl. Gregg wondered who the girl was and whether she had meant anything to David as well as Gordon, and why she was in the picture. That was the trouble with spying, you never could ask for an explanation of what you had found out.

She turned to the letters. They were to David, and the signature was "Gordon." Her heart was pounding as she smoothed out the folded sheets of paper, and she resented Gordon McKay furiously for having such a tiny, illegible handwriting that she would hardly have time to make it out. The first letter was an account of a trip, and it was funny. She almost laughed aloud at some of the descriptions but caught herself in time. There wasn't anything odd in saving a letter like that, it was something you would want to save. She skipped over some of the obviously innocuous passages to the end. No closing salutation, no love, just "See you soon—Gordon." She opened the second letter and began to read.

She had the sense that someone was standing behind her. She had no real reason, simply that sixth sense that makes a cat's fur rise and a human being feel a disturbing prickling at the back of his neck. She turned. David Wilder Savage, wet and naked except for a towel, was standing not five feet away from her with his arms folded and an expression on his face of inconsolable fury. He did not say a word, or move, he simply stood there and watched her. Behind him, from the other room, Gregg could still hear the sound of the shower turned on full force.

"What are you doing here?" she asked stupidly.

"Playing Gregg," he said. He walked over to her then and took the letters from her hand. They slipped from her cold fingers into his, and he glanced at them and put them back into her hand and closed her fingers around them. He still did not speak and she could not think of anything to say. She stood there and watched him, trying to think of some excuse, some joke to make it all right again, while he very methodically and grimly opened each drawer of the dresser and took out everything that was in them, in handfuls, and tossed clothes and papers and miscellaneous articles to the floor at her feet.

"Are you crazy?" she asked finally, shakily.

"Here," he said. "I'm making it easier for you. You can look at everything. Would you like me to clean out die top of the closet?"

"Stop it," Gregg cried, frightened. "Stop it!"

"I don't want you to miss anything," he said.

She was knee-deep in a tangle of clothing—socks and shirts and underwear, and even his leather jewelry box, which he opened first so that the cuff links and tie clips that were inside spilled out. He finished emptying the bureau drawers and then he turned and walked back to the bathroom without a word and slammed the door. Gregg was so humiliated she did not know what to do, and she was filled with love for him. Poor man, he was completely innocent and hiding nothing. She shouldn't have gone through his things, it must have annoyed him terribly. She would put everything back neatly where it had been before and then he would forgive her. As she put back his clothes Gregg cheered up a little. She was rearranging everything so neatly, folding some things and making room for others, that he would be glad, after all, that this had happened. She could tell him she had been trying to do this in the first place, for a surprise, and that she had come upon the letters by accident and had been tempted by them. That was it! He'd believe her.

The shower had stopped and a short while later David himself emerged from the bathroom, fully dressed in clean clothes. Gregg had just finished putting everything away. He ignored her, walking around her, and looked at his watch.

"I'll give you five minutes to finish investigating and get out of here," he said calmly, "and if you're not out then, I'm going to throw you out."

"Why?" she cried. "Why?"

Tou don't know why?"

*Nol I was just trying to clean out your dresser drawers for you, make them a httle neater. For ... a surprise," she finished lamely.

"I have a maid for that," he said.

"Well ... I just wanted to ... do something for you."

"And did you find a lot of things? Did your sick little inquisitive mind find all kinds of secrets? Did you discover that I have twelve pairs of black socks and ten pairs of gray? Do you know that I keep my torn handkerchiefs at the bottom of the pile instead of throwing them out? Did you find my expired driver's licenses and some old letters and photographs that I forgot to put into an album? And are you satisfied?"

There was nothing else to say. "Please forgive me," Gregg said.

"Why do you have to do things like that?"

"I don't know . . ."

'1 don't know either," he said. "And I just don't care any more. I'm tired of the sight of your face. I can't stand to see it any more. I want you to go away."

"You can't really mean that if you have to ask me to go," Gregg said. "If you really hated me you'd try to throw me out."

"Hate you? I don't hate you."

"Then forgive me. I'll never do it again."

"I keep telling you, I don't want to have to forgive you. I've forgiven you for a thousand things—invasion of privacy, neurotic mistrust, insensitivity, selfishness. It isn't just this, tonight. This is only the very last thing. Why do you think I crept up on you? Because I'm getting to be like you, in a way; I'm beginning to have hallucinations about you. I want you to get out of this house, as a personal favor, like a big girl."

"Don't be mad at me," Gregg said. "I'U go sit in the living room and then after a while you come in and we'll pretend the evening just started. We'll just start all over again."

"Come on," he said, "like a big girl." Why, he actually sounded as if he were soothing someone who was deranged. "Come on," he repeated. He went to the closet and brought out her coat. "Here's your coat."

"Are you throwing me out?"

"Yes."

Gregg felt so sick it seemed as if there was hot blood in her eardrums. "You can't throw me out," she said, "it's early."

"Here's your purse." He looked at it as he held it out to her. "It's pretty," he murmured.

"You've seen it before."

"Did you have gloves?"

"I don't want to go home!" Gregg said. Her voice rose in her fright at the utter lack of emotion on his face. Anger was something she could cope with, she would only have to soothe him, perhaps even cry, and he would be forgiving. But this complete calm and resolution was something she had never seen on David's face before. "I don't want to go home! Don't make me go home!"

"I don't care where you go," he said.

"I'll walk around the block and come back," she suggested.

"I'm going to sleep now. It's late."

She was afraid to touch him. "What time will I see you tomorrow?"

"I'm busy tomorrow."

"Well . . . when will I see you?"

"I never want to see you again."

"Why? What did I do?" Gregg cried. "What did I do?"

"You don't know, do you?" he asked. He actually sounded sorry for her. "You really don't know."

He stood there for a moment looking at her. There was pity on his face, as well as calm now, "Kiss me . . ." Gregg whispered.

He leaned down without touching her with his hands and kissed her very lightly on the forehead. "Be a good girl," he said.

"I'll call you tomorrow," Gregg said. She drew herself up to her full height and walked to the door. "Good night."

"Good night, Gregg."

She walked out into the hall and he shut the door behind her. She could hear the soft click of the lock. She turned. There was his door, closed, and he was behind it. Behind it, moving about, still awake, was the most precious thing in her world. She stood close to his door, listening. She could hear faint sounds through his door, footsteps, the sound of a record starting on the phonograph, and they reassured her. She could tell what he was doing from these sounds of his routine, and it was almost as good as being there with him. He was alone, all alone. After a long while Gregg grew tired

from standing there in one place in her high-heeled shoes and she began to slip her feet out of her shoes one at a time and stand on only one, rubbing the aching toes of the other foot on her ankle. She looked about for a place to sit.

The stairway that led to the upper floor was just outside David Wilder Savage's door, and the wall it ran along was the outside wall of his apartment. In her mind she could see the layout of the rooms, and Gregg knew this was his bedroom wall. She climbed the stairs to a step near the top, just under the halfway landing and a small closed window, and sat there. The light bulb which illuminated the hall was downstairs, on the main landing for this floor, and up here in the gloom it was shadowy and still. She leaned against the wall and heard nothing. She had a moment of disappointment, afraid that the wall was too thick for any sound to escape. But then she heard footsteps and a thud that was frighteningly close. It was as if he had thrown something to the floor. She realized that she had not heard anything before because he had not yet entered the room.

How strange it was, and how intimate, to be here in the darkness, listening to those sounds of someone she knew so well and loved so much. She heard the closet door close as he evidently put away his clothes. He was going to bed. Poor thing, he was going to bed. She looked at her watch. It was ten minutes to twelve.

Very faintly, she heard him cough as he settled down in bed. God, you could hear everything. She heard the telephone ring beside his bed, and she sat bolt upright, straining to hear. She heard his voice . . . his voice ... if he only knew how close to him she was, hearing everything. It was a business call. Gregg gave a sigh of relief. She only wanted him to go to sleep, to stay there all alone, separated from her by this thin, revealing wall, hers for the night. She heard him stop speaking, walk about the room, close another door. Then he came back and she knew he had gone to bed. For a long time there was no sound at aU, and Gregg knew that at last he had fallen asleep.

She put her hand against the wall, palm toward where he would be. My darling, she thought. Soon it would be morning and then she could call him on the phone. She knew she could telephone him early because he had gone to bed early, and so she would not be waking him up. Everything would be all right. It had to be all right. He was right here with her and she knew what he was doing. It

would be morning soon. At three o'clock in the morning Gregg left David's apartment house and took a taxi home and went to bed. Caroline was already asleep, breathing very quietly, curled up next to the wall. When Caroline's alarm went off at eight Gregg would get up too. That would be early enough so that David would not have had time to leave the house and escape.

It was only after a week had gone by that Gregg finally realized he had meant it. A week! It seemed like forever. She could hardly face the fact that it was only three days, then four, then at last seven. She called him every morning, early, often being answered by a sleepy voice that hardly seemed to know what she was saying. And he always hung up on her. "I meant it, Gregg," he would say. "Stop calling. Goodbye." She would call him right back and he would answer, innocently the first time, and then hang up on her. And when she would call him again his hello would be wary, and finally he would not answer at all. She got into the habit of telephoning him at night just to hear his voice, not answering his hellos, and then she would hang up on him before he could do it to her. She did not know if he ever realized these mystery calls were hers. She called him at dinnertime to see if he was out or at home, and at nine to see if he had stayed home for the evening. She called him after midnight to see if he had returned. But telephone calls told her nothing, for he could have been there all the time with another girl. If he was alone, if he was possibly suffering despite his firm refusals to give her another chance, then she wanted to know it. So a week after tlie night David had told her goodbye Gregg left her apartment at one in the morning and went to his.

She went furtively up to his floor and crept to her place at the top of the stairs. She hoped no one would decide to go home at this hour and accidentally find her; they might think she was peculiar. She huddled close to the wall, listening.

"Darling?" a voice said. It was a female voice, a light, sophisticated voice that would say "Darling" and not mean it—and tlie man she said it to would know she had not meant it. Gregg stiffened, seeing waves of light flickering in front of her eyes there in the half-darkness.

"Mmm?" It was he, she could tell even by this one syllable.

"Which side you sleep on?"

"This one."

"Do you mind if I have it? I'm peculiar that way."

Gregg was clenching her fists so tightly they felt numb.

There was afiFection in David's voice, but also an underlying touch of worry. "Don't tell me you're compulsive? Just don't tell me that."

The girl laughed. "No, darling."

Darling, Gregg thought. Bitch, bitch, bitch. Who did you sleep with last night? Somebody else you called darling? Or my David, my love? She was shaking with humiliation and grief, and hatred for this girl whom she did not know even by appearance, and she wanted to stand up and run away, downi the stairs to the street, but she was powerless to move. She had to stay, to listen, to hear the worst and suffer the more for it, and never give him up no matter what it cost her in pain and even disgust with her foolish self. She heard sounds then, the beginning of love sounds, and she wished more than anything to faint. She felt as if there were a flame running from her throat to the pit of her stomach. She was shuddering all over, like someone who is about to retch, but she could not pull herself away from that wall and those familiar words and soft noises.