The Best of Everything (64 page)

She heard music, turned up high, as it always was. You could hear it dimly through the bedroom wall if you rested your cheek against the outer wall, even though the hi-fi set was in the living room. Next to the place on the wall where she leaned her face someone had written something. It was a scrawl, written with crayon. It said, "I hate Johnny." For some reason Gregg thought that was funny, and she smiled, closing her eyes. I hate Johnny. Who hated Johnny? A girl probably, Gregg thought. Some girl whom Johnny had mistreated, or perhaps only ignored. I hate Johnny, she said to herself happily. I hate David. No, I love him, I love him. I hate Gregg.

She opened her eyes instantly when she heard the sound of unsteady footsteps. Somebody was coming up the stairs, and her heart began to pound. Who would be coming here at this hour, after midnight? A drunk probably, or something worse. She shrank against

the wall, hoping that whoever it was would not notice her and would go right by.

Go away, she tliought, go away, go away. If she thought that hard enough, whoever it was would leave. Go away, I hate you. Leave me alone. Go home. But she saw the top of a round white head, streaked with sparse, straight black hairs, coming up the flight of stairs below, and she heard the sound of footsteps and labored breathing. The head moved from side to side as its owner's body moved from side to side, and she heard the soft thud of an arm or hip striking the rail. She knew even before she smelled the whisky that the man was drunk.

He reached the landing and stood there for a moment, panting, before he started up the stairs to where she was sitting. At first he did not see her. He was of medium height, but he looked very tall because she was curled up in a Httle ball trying to hide, and he was almost as wide as the stairway itself. His coat hung open and so did the jacket of his suit, and his sleeve was torn as if he had already fallen once, perhaps in the gutter. She saw his face first, a white, rather stupid face, his mouth hanging open with the effort of catching his breath. There was a smudge of dirt on his cheek. Then he started up the stairs toward her, holding tightly to the rail, and suddenly he noticed her and stopped.

"Hey . . ." he said.

Gregg didn't answer.

"Hey! Hey you, girlie!"

Her heart was hammering so hard she saw red streaks in front of her eyes. Get away, she thought, get away, get away from me.

He started up the stairs again, but this time he was coming toward her because he knew she was there. What could she do? Run down? Run up? Run somewhere! He was only four steps away from her now and his waist was on the same level with her eyes. She saw his white shirt, containing his huge stomach like a parachute, and the beltless trousers below it. There was one button holding the trousers together above the zipper, and the edge of the fabric had turned over from the tightness of it, showing the v/hite lining. Gregg stared at that white lining with fascinated horror, and at that zipper, and it was as if she were a little girl again, staring at strange men in the street after the first time she had discovered that they were different

from little girls. Get away from me, she thought wildly, get away, get away . . . rapistl

"What's the matter?" he asked. "You lost your key?" She hardly heard him. She jumped to her feet and tried to push her way past him to go down the stairs, to get to David's apartment, to escape. She could feel that great, immovable, cloth-covered body blocking her way and could smell his breath. "Move," she sobbed, elbowing him away, slipping past him in the little space that was left between him and the wall, and as she did her foot missed the step below and she groped for it, feeling the sickening lurch of lost balance as she started to fall. She did not know if it was his voice or her own she heard crying out. All she felt was the world coming up at her, the world turning inside out, inside her own throat, inside her head, as she clawed for a railing, a hand, anything that was not there.

Chapter 31

"Well," Paul Landis said happily. "This was really a pleasant surprise. I'm glad you called me tonight. I was just sitting there, trying to unwind from my hell of a day at the oflfice, and I can't think of a better way of spending the evening than with you."

Caroline smiled at him but she did not answer. She was tearing up lettuce for salad because it gave her something to do with her hands, but she was hardly aware of what she was doing. Eddie was having dinner with those people now, she was thinking, and soon he would return to his hotel and go to bed. Perhaps he would have a difficult time falling asleep because he would be wondering whether or not she would say yes tomorrow. As for her, she wondered when she would ever be able to fall asleep with ease again.

"How do you like your steak?" she asked. "Rare, don't you?"

"As rare as possible," Paul said. "Can I help with anything?"

"No. You just sit there. Have another drink."

She finished making the salad and put the steaks into the broiler and then she went to sit on the studio couch opposite Paul. She

lighted a cigarette and put it out almost immediately because she could hardly taste it.

"Can't I make you a drink?" Paul asked.

"No, thank you."

"I'm glad you're cooking me a dinner," Paul said. "I haven't eaten here for a long time."

"My cooking is no treat, believe me," Caroline said. She lighted another cigarette.

"It is to me."

She smiled weakly at him and put her cigarette out in the ash tray. Smile, speak, react, go on living, she told herself. First you'll have to tell yourself when to do it, then it will finally become automatic, the way it used to be before this afternoon. People go on living, they have to. She was glad she had asked Paul to come over, because she needed someone who really liked her to be with her. Paul was comforting. Perhaps if she were to cry on his shoulder and tell him all about Eddie he would not be comforting, he might tell her it was her own fault. He might never understand. But in any case she could not take the chance, nor did she really want to. What had happened to her today was her own problem, and she had to cope with it alone. As for Paul, he was her friend, and he was here for dinner, and he would keep her from thinking too much. For that she was grateful.

"I'm glad you were home when I called," Caroline said.

How grateful he looked! It hurt her to see how his face lighted up when she said that, and she felt fonder of him than she ever had before. He only wanted to be good to her, in all the accepted and respectable ways, and it would give him pleasure. "I brought your Christmas present," Paul said, reaching into his pocket.

He handed her a small package, wrapped in department-store Christmas paper. "May I open it now?" she asked.

"I want you to."

She opened it, and inside, nesting on a layer of white cotton, was a large rectangular gold charm, marked like a calendar for December, with a tiny ruby set on the twenty-fifth. "Oh, it's beautiful!"

"You have a bracelet for it, I've noticed it," Paul said.

"I do. I'll have this one put right on."

"I really bought it with an ulterior purpose in mind," Paul said.

"What?"

1 thought perhaps the date might have more significance than merely another Christmas."

If you only knew, Caroline thought. I hope to God I never again have another Christmas like this one has turned out to be. "Really? In what way?" she asked.

"Something sentimental."

"I've got to turn the steaks," Caroline said quickly. She stood up. "I'm sorry to interrupt you, dear, but I know you hate them well done."

"You're very domestic, do you know that?" Paul said.

"I am?" She was bent over the broiler, turning the steaks, and she did not look at him. The smoke from the sizzling meat made tears come into her eyes, or perhaps it was something else that did.

"You really are."

She came back to the couch and sat there, looking at her Christmas present. It was so thoughtful of him, and so extravagant, the way Paul always was. Her only thought was: He shouldn't have spent all that money. But she knew he enjoyed doing it for her, and that made her feel a httle less guilty about not caring more for the sentimentality of his present.

"What I meant by sentimental," Paul went on, looking at her closely, "was that I thought perhaps this year you would have something special to remember this Christmas for."

Her heart turned over and there were tears in her eyes now. Stop talking, she thought. Please . . .

"What I mean is," Paul said, *Td like to . . . well, I might as well get out with it, and say it." He smiled, a little self-consciously. "I never was a trial lawyer, so I'm no good at speeches. I'd like this Christmas to be the day you and I were engaged to be married."

"Oh, Paul . . ." Caroline said gently, and she shook her head.

"Don't say no," he said lightly. "You don't know what a good catch I am." And he smiled at her so she would know he was only making light of it because it really meant so much to him.

"You are," she said. "You are. You'll make some girl very very happy."

"Why not you?" he asked, still smiling. "You're my favorite girl. You're the only one I really care about making happy."

"You do make me happy," she said, trying to match his light tone and not able to look at him. "But I don't want to get married."

"Yes you do."

"Someday, yes. But not right now. I'm . . . not ready to get married right now."

"Don't wait too long," Paul said.

She smiled up at him, able to meet his eyes at last because this last comment had hurt her enough to overcome the guilt she felt at having turned him down. "May I still keep my Christmas present?"

"I should say so. Maybe it will make you change your mind. You still have one whole day until the twenty-fifth."

"I'd better look at those steaks," she murmured, and fled to the stove.

Paul had brought wine besides the Christmas present and they had it with their meal. She put a record on the phonograph, a loud jazzy one that would in no way remind her of Eddie. She had taken his picture off the dresser and the photograph album off the coffee table. But she did not need anything to remind her of Eddie, she was numb with bewilderment and unhappiness and she felt as if there were a little motor in the top of her brain that she could not turn off, no matter how hard she tried. She needed all her efforts simply to respond, to speak, to answer, to act alive for Paul. She was two people: the Caroline who asked him if he would like more wine, would he like regular coffee or expresso, and the Caroline who was clinging to these simple thoughts as a last desperate refuge, lest the motor in the top of her brain explode.

"I was working on an interesting case in the office today," Paul said. "There's a corporation in the Bronx . . ." Click, the motor turned off his voice. He went on talking, telling her of his case, and the motor attended to certain functions, such as: Smile, Nod, Clear the table. Bring an ash tray. Smile, Nod . . . And all the time she was so numb with pain that she was only aware that she had cleared the table when she saw her hands bringing dessert plates.

After dinner they sat on the studio couches again and drank a great deal of coffee, or at least Paul did, while Caroline sipped at hers and watched him and listened to him speak when she could concentrate on it, and stood up once in a while to change the record on the phonograph.

"Oh, you have Noel Cowardl" Paul exclaimed, looking over her shoulder. "Play that. I like it."

"I'd rather not," Caroline said. Her voice was soft and faraway

in her own ears. Had she really answered, or only imagined herself speaking? "Let's play this one."

"You look tired," Paul said.

"Tired? I guess I am."

He looked at his watch. "Would you believe it? It's after twelve. I've really started to relax now. Don't you feel relaxed?"

"I guess so," she murmured. She was so tense that she had pains running down her back, and when the telephone beside the bed shrilled she jumped and gasped.

'Tour boy friends certainly call at odd hours," Paul said pleasantly.

Eddie . . . she thought. Oh, Eddie . . . She was almost afraid to answer the phone, afraid-that if she did, when she heard his voice she would start to cry. She knew it was Eddie, it had to be.

"Hello," she said. She could barely manage the word.

"Caroline?"

It wasn't Eddie, she didn't know who it was. "Yes?"

"This is David Wilder Savage."

"Oh . . . How are you?"

"Can you come over here right away?" he said. "Something's happened to Gregg."

Paul came with her uptown to the address David Wilder Savage had given her. It was a walk-up, and parked by the curb in front of it were a black police car and a long ambulance. There were two men taking a stretcher out of the ambulance, and Caroline hurried into the house before they had even started in and pressed frantically on the buzzer.

"The door's open," Paul said, and put his arm around her as he led her in.

She ran up the stairs, with Paul trailing her. She did not know what floor David Wilder Savage lived on, but as soon as she saw the crowd of people clustered on the landing she knew. She pushed her way through them. Gregg was lying on the floor at the foot of a flight of stairs, and she looked unconscious. A policeman took hold of Caroline's arm.

"What happened?" Caroline cried.

"Don't touch her," the policeman said. "She's dead."

She couldn't believe it, she just stared at him, and then at Gregg. "She's not deadl"

David Wilder Savage was standing in front of his half-opened door, dressed in a bathrobe, and there was a girl standing partly behind him looking troubled. That was all, troubled. She was wearing a bathrobe too. "This is Miss Adams' roommate, Caroline Bender," he said to the policeman.

The policeman loosened his grip on Caroline's arm, but he did not let go entirely, as if he was waiting to see if she was going to do something desperate. "I'm sorry," he said.

"Gregg?" Caroline said softiy. "Gregg . . ." She knelt down beside Gregg, who looked as if she were only unconscious, and then she saw the odd, bent way her head fitted on her shoulders. Her soft blond hair fanned out on the floor, over the dirt that was there, and where people had walked with their shoes, and without thinking about it Caroline reached out toward her.