You Live Once (7 page)

I parked and Mary made no move toward the door handle, so I gathered her in and kissed her. She hesitated for a stilted second and then baked the enamel on my teeth. She was no pulpy junior miss. She brought to the task at hand a nice interplay of musculature, a crowding enthusiasm, and the durability and implacability of a Marciano. She stopped all clocks except the one in the blood, so that on terminus, I was dimly startled to find myself merely sitting in my own automobile.

“You’re an agreeable monster, Sewell,” she said softly.

“Likewise.”

“You should get a bonus for overtime.”

“A truly obscure remark,” I said, pretending young innocence.

“Would, Sewell, that I were a touch more charitable and I would make of myself a suitable bonus, because I suspect you are a nice guy who deserves a better deal than you are getting.”

“Tonight is my night to be told I’m a nice guy. How do I go about arousing your charitable instincts, lady?”

She permitted a second flanking operation. During same I investigated traditionally, hopefully, a breast warm and classic. She rebanked her fires and extricated lips and breast, putting a cold foot of distance betwixt us.

“No sale, Sewell.”

“Anything my best friends have neglected to tell me?”

“Nope. You are a fine crew-cut, long-limbed specimen of young American manhood, my dear.”

“They why?”

“Don’t ask it with a pout. I guess it is because you are what you are. For a man to intrigue me he must have a wide streak of son-of-a-bitch.”

“I can work on that.”

“Hardly.”

“Could you force yourself?”

She reached a quick hand and knuckled the top of my head. “That would be pure charity, sweets, and you have too much pride for that, don’t you?”

“And the next line is let us be good friends.”

“Seriously, I’d like that, Clint. I need a good friend.”

I sighed with resignation. “Okay, what do you want to do with your good friend on the morrow.”

“Wouldst go to church with me, sir?”

It was quite the last thing I expected. “Yes. Of course.”

“Pick me up here at twenty of eleven then.”

I walked her to her door. She smiled up at me. “You
are
sweet.”

“Then pat me on the head, damn it.”

“Temper, temper! Kiss goodnight.”

As that kiss ended I took revenge with my long right arm. She yelped and took a cut at me and missed. As I drove home I knew that if she had a full-length mirror and looked back down over her shoulder within the next ten minutes, she could admire a nice distinct hand print.

Looking back I can count over twenty dates with her, including the time at the motel and the last one on the night of Saturday, May fifteenth. But not including that last ride we took together, up into the hills. Date from which she would not return.

Nancy and I sat on the pine log. She smoked her cigarette and scratched at a punkie bite on her ankle. Ever since the night she had gotten drunk and told me her woes, we had talked frankly with each other, though she had retained an aura of shyness. I had not told her what I had learned that night. There was no point in it. Suspicions could hurt, but the actuality would be worse.

“I hope … I hope she never comes back,” Nancy said.

I didn’t say anything for too long and the words hung there between us until Nancy laughed mirthlessly. “I don’t mean I hope anything bad has happened to her. Even to her. I just hope she’s found some other fly to pull the wings off.”

“She’s impulsive,” I said.

“Nice polite word. She’s a harpy. She feeds on people. She has a nice built-in excuse—her insane mother. That’s handy for her. No marriage, so she does as she pleases. Including going to bed with my husband.”

“You aren’t positive of that, though.”

“Oh, I am, Clint. Entirely certain. I kidded myself for a long time. But you can’t live with a man and not know. All the little false touches. That blandness, with all the guilt underneath. I know, Clint. I’ve known for a long time. It started back in February, a month after we arrived. She didn’t waste any time, did she?”

“Don’t try to laugh about it.”

“Aren’t I supposed to be gay about it? Isn’t that
sophisticated or something? Last night after we got home we had a real scrap. He wouldn’t admit it, of course. I asked him about the things that are missing. His good robe, some sports shirts, an extra pair of slippers—little things like that. And a book of poems. Poems! My God, can you imagine reading poems to a … a thing like that? I asked him if it would ease his conscience any if I took a lover. You know, continental style. Sauce for the goose. At that he stormed out and didn’t come back until five this morning. Anyway, I wanted to talk to you, Clint. I haven’t told him or anybody else, but I’m going to leave him.”

“Do you mean that?”

“I have some pride. I don’t have to put up with this. I can earn my own living. It hurts … hurts badly, Clint, when someone tells you in that way that you aren’t enough for them. Enough woman.”

“You want to be awfully sure, Nancy.”

“I am sure. I’ve told you so much of my personal life. Aren’t you sick of it? Don’t you want to know everything? The whole story? I have two small brown moles right here on my left hip. Tomatoes give me a rash. When I get emotionally upset, I get diarrhea. Nervous colon they call it. I lost my virginity when I was sixteen and had a job waiting on table at a summer …”

“Nancy!” Her voice had gone shrill and her face was tense.

The tension went out of her. She put her head down on her bare knees and said in a small voice, “I’m sorry, Clint.”

I touched the silky-fine blonde hair. “You’ve had it rough. I don’t blame you. But promise one thing. Think about it for a week.”

She sighed. “If you think I ought to.”

“I do.”

She sighed again. “Clint?”

“Yes, honey.”

“Clint … do you want me?” Her voice was shy, far off.

I knew why she asked. I knew how careful I had to be. “Yes, of course. Any man would say yes. You’re a special thing, Nancy.”

“I’m not. But I’ll … be special for you. When, Clint? And where?”

“I want you, but I don’t think it would be smart. I think you still love the guy. He’s hurt you badly. You want reassurance. You want to be wanted. And you want to hurt him back. I’m your friend, Nancy. I don’t want to be caught in the middle of that sort of thing. Suppose he sees what a fool he’s been, and you get back together. You’d always regret it. You’ve never done anything like that, have you?”

“No. I … I don’t know what I want to do.”

“Think for a week. Then we’ll talk again. Okay?”

She lifted her head and looked at me. Her cheeks were wet. “Well you could anyway kiss me,” she said almost fiercely.

No boats were near and they couldn’t see us from the patio of the Raymond camp. I stood up, took her hand, pulled her up and kissed her. It lasted a long time. There was none of the quick flame of Mary. Nancy’s lips were soft and warm and very sweet. But there was heat there, a slow burning—enough heat so I wondered how Dodd could be such an utter fool. We stepped apart and smiled at each other.

“I guess you’re darn good for me,” she said. “Like a sort of substitute conscience. I wish it was you I was in love with. It would be so much easier. And better.”

“You’re special, Nancy.”

“Somebody has to think so. I guess we better get back now.”

We climbed the steps. I was certain Mrs. Raymond checked me over quickly for signs of lipstick. Nancy had dabbed it off with a Kleenex. I said goodby as soon as I could and left.

I did not like driving by the entrance to the road where I had left Mary’s body. Soon the night would come with small animals rustling through the shrubbery, with dew weighting the white skirt, misting the bare shoulders. There would be insect song and a riding moon. I wished I could have left her in a warm dry place. It couldn’t matter to her, I knew, but it mattered to me. It didn’t seem right.

I ate in town and it was dark when I turned into my drive. Mrs. Speers ran a window up and called to me. I braked the car, motor running.

“Has Mary Olan turned up yet, Mr. Sewell?” she asked.

“Not yet, Mrs. Speers.”

“They must be getting very worried by now.”

“I guess so.”

“You won’t forget my trash tomorrow, will you?”

“I’ll remember it, Mrs. Speers.”

“I guess you’ll be going to bed right now, won’t you?”

“How do you mean?”

She laughed. “Well, you know I heard you drive in at four, this morning.”

“I was in by two, Mrs. Speers.”

She laughed again. “You young folks, you lose track of time.”

“I know it wasn’t that late.”

“Goodnight, Mr. Sewell.” She closed the window.

Inside my apartment, I locked the door, turned on the lights, closed the blinds. It was good to be alone and in a locked place. I felt as though I would now be able to think clearly and consecutively. All day I had been playing a part. It had left no room for reflection. I felt as though my face ached from smiling. I had walked among the beach people, shaking hands with a hand that had carried the dead. It gave me an appreciation of that degree of iron control a murderer must have.

During the day I had learned two new facts: Dodd Raymond had been out of his house until five, and a car
had driven into my driveway at four. I had no doubt but that the car at four had brought Mary to the place of her death. Probably Mrs. Speers, sleeping through my first arrival, hearing the arrival at four, turned over and went to sleep again and did not hear the car leave.

I had to think of Dodd as the suspect. I knew that he and Mary Olan had been having an affair. And I knew that Mary was cruel, taunting, ruthless—withholding herself on whim. I could imagine Dodd, infuriated beyond reason, striking her in anger, killing her. Maybe she had showed him the key I had given her, hinting at a reason for it which did not exist. Yes, he could have killed in sudden jealous anger. And, having killed in that way, knowing that I was a very sound sleeper, knowing the key was available, he would be capable of planting the body in my apartment. It would not be done out of malice toward me—though there would be some of that. It would be done as the most logical way of diverting suspicion.

Thus, had Mary died of a blow, or died with the mark of the strangler’s hands on her throat, I would have had no doubt that it was Dodd. But the cause of death had been my red belt around her throat; the print of the weave had been in her flesh. And so she had been brought to my apartment to be killed there. And I could not see Dodd, ambitious and intelligent, premeditating something that could so easily have gone wrong. Had I constituted a serious threat to his career, it might be plausible. On the other hand ambition was a disease that could distort facts. Maybe he believed I was a threat to his career.

His worry about Mary had seemed genuine. Yet what Ray and Tory had told me seemed to indicate he was a good actor. Of course the affair itself had been a potential threat to his career. But ambitious men have been blinded by flesh before.

Like so many guessing games, this one came to a dead end. He could have, and he couldn’t have. I could carry it right up to the final moment, and then my mind
rebelled at the picture of Dodd bringing her into the apartment, selecting the belt, drawing the makeshift noose tightly around her throat.

When I took my pajamas from the closet, a drifting memory of her musky perfume remained there. I went to bed emotionally exhausted. In the faint light that came into the room I could see the open closet door, and I could imagine she was still there.

I slept and dreamed. I dreamed we all sat around a coffin. Mary sat up in the coffin, naked, the belt around her neck. Everyone looked at me. I explained that it was just a muscle reflex that made her sit up. She got out of the coffin and came to me. We danced. All the others kept time with a slow sad clapping of their hands, watching us as we danced. I kept whispering to Mary that she should get back into the coffin.

I looked down at her bare breast as we danced. Above the nipple was marked C.P.P. It was not tattooed, it was in black, in raised, shiny ornate letters, like the engraving on an expensive calling card. She said Dodd had done it, and the hideous mouth grinned. I said she had to get back into the coffin. She danced me to the coffin and I looked into it and saw why she could not. Nancy Raymond lay in the coffin, naked, her body gilded. On her body crouched a monstrous hairy spider with iridescent eyes. I awoke in cold sweating childhood terror and knew I had cried out because the echo of my cry seemed to be in the room. It was a long time before I slept again.

At eight-twenty-five the next morning, a grey gusty Monday, I parked with my front bumper under the little white sign that said
MR. SEWELL
. With such small conveniences are the souls of executives purchased. My office, along with the space assigned to Engineering and to Research, is on what you could call a mezzanine looking out over the main production floor. My secretary is in the room with me, along with filing cases for
blueprints, a pair of drafting tables, my desk, sundry straight chairs. The office wall nearest the production area is duo-therm glass from waist-height up. Beyond that wall is a railed catwalk that extends the length of the building, with a circular iron staircase at either end.

To get a piece of work out you need men, machines and materials at the right place at the right time. To facilitate this I have four production chasers, a production record clerk. I keep a beady eye on inventory, on quotas, on equipment maintenance, on absenteeism. With the system we have, it should run like watches. But it never does. If it isn’t an industrial accident, then it’s some storeroom monkey counting an empty box as being a hundred available items necessary for assembly. Next some setup man blunders and an automatic milling machine works busily all day turning out scrap. When things start to roll, a cancellation and change order comes in from on high. Then maintenance fumbles and we tear the gearing out of a turret lathe. You get behind and try to jolly the boys into doing a little back busting to catch up and the union steward comes around talking darkly about speedups. Then I have to go down on the floor with my time and motion study man and quack with the steward.