Chapter 10
Ken sipped his martini and studied the cluttered room sourly. The room was small to start with, part of a Victorian mansion that had been divided into cramped apartments. The furnishings, mismatched, overstuffed, and worn out, filled it to the point of suffocation. With Judy around, he had never really noticed what a gloomy place it could be. Now he noticed.
He got up to refresh his drink. The bottle of Beefeater's was the only touch of color in the room. It was also the only thing here that belonged to him. He had nothing to relax with, nothing to distract his mind from unpleasant thoughts. He had no desire to turn on the television set, Judy's constant companion. Nor did he want to listen to her records, for her taste was similar to Marcia's. And there were no books.
He went to the bedroom, a journey of three paces, and studied the unmade bed. Judy had been sleeping here when he'd left for his office this morning. She'd had to be at work at four. That should have given her plenty of time to make the bed. But she hadn't expected him to return here-she'd had no reason to tidy up the place. He hadn't discussed his domestic problems with her last night.
He turned back to the shabby little living room. He wondered what he was doing here, and he could come up with no sensible reason. He could be at home now, working in his study ... That random thought brought back all the bitterness of last night's argument, and Ms hand tightened convulsively on his glass. His study was a mess, nearly demolished by Marcia's crazy daughter.
He began to realize how illogical his own actions were. He wasn't at fault in any way. There was no reason on earth why he should be forced to flee the comfort of his own home. The fault was all Melody's and, by extension, Marcia's. Perhaps he had succeeded in teaching Marcia a lesson by staying away all night. She might now be in a more receptive mood to listen to his thoroughly reasonable demand that Melody receive psychiatric treatment. There was no point in punishing her by withholding his presence any longer.
Having made his decision, he felt better; even Judy's apartment no longer seemed so drab and cheerless. He had convinced himself that everything he'd done had been right. He would return home now. Marcia would agree to his plan for Melody. Everything would work out all right. He finished his drink in one gulp.
He rinsed out his glass and replaced it in the kitchenette. He put the bottle he had brought with him back into its bag and took it with him as he locked the door. There was no point in leaving evidence for Judy that he had returned to her place from his office this evening. She might worry about it. She might even take it into her head to call him at home when she returned from work. That would never do.
He went down the rickety stairway and out the front door, glad that he was able to do so without meeting any of the denizens of this crumbling pile. His age, his haircut, and his expensive suit made him conspicuous here. Anyone encountering him would know exactly why he was here, and they would probably have a good laugh over it. That was why he usually insisted on taking Judy to a motel, even though she preferred to go to her apartment and had even given him a key to the place. Last night had been the first time he'd made use of it. She'd been delighted-overjoyed even-when he'd slipped into bed and awakened her with his caresses. Home was never like that.
Driving home, he rehearsed his arguments carefully. He would avoid mention of the fact that he hadn't returned last night. He had succeeded in absolving himself from any sense of guilt for that, and he would refuse to let Marcia make him assume any. If she brought up the subject, he would brush it aside. It was irrelevant to the real issue, the issue of Melody's-well-her insanity: that was the proper name for it He began to feel a glow of pride at the selflessness of his own thoughts. He was concerned only with his stepdaughter's welfare, her mental health. He knew what was best for her; he had to convince Marcia, quietly and reasonably, that this was so.
Approaching the road where he lived, he noted a small cluster of unsavory characters at the corner. At first he thought they were kids, dressed in the raggedy-assed style that had been more popular a few years ago. When he slowed to give them a closer inspection, he saw that two or three of them were undeniably adults, even middle-aged adults.
Before he could give this scruffy bunch a more thorough inspection, he saw a familiar face: Lucifer's. The dog was sitting patiently at the edge of the group. In the next instant he spotted Melody. Her unbound hair, her jeans and her sandals and her Mexican wedding-shirt had allowed her to blend into the group.
He stopped, planning to investigate, but she hailed him and started across the road with the dog before he could get out of the car. He stared hard at the loiterers. Some of them returned his stare with neither hostility nor much interest
"Hey, how about a lift?" Melody said, opening the door and letting the dog into the back seat before he could reply.
"Who the hell are those people?" Ken demanded.
"Oh, I don't know. Just people."
He continued to stare at the ragged company, trying to project moral indignation and territorial outrage. The men and women were singularly unkempt, even unwashed, and their clothing was bizarre. They looked like extras from an unromanticized film about the Middle Ages, refugees from the Black Death. They ignored him as they drifted on down the road in the twilight heading in the direction of his home.
"What did they want?"
"They didn't want anything," Melody said.
"Then why the hell were you talking to them?" he demanded, unable to keep rage out of his voice as he turned on her.
"Jeez!" she exclaimed, exaggerating her surprise to parody. "You mean, I should've waited to be properly introduced?"
"Don't-" he cut off his angry words and paused before permitting himself to speak. "They don't belong around here, obviously. They look like a bunch of cutthroats. I think you should have more sense about talking to strangers."
"They just wanted to pet the dog," Melody grumbled. "For Christ's sake. Are you giving me a lift home, or do I have to get out and walk?"
"Yeah, well," he said, turning his attention back to the car and starting up again. "Did they ask you any questions-pump you for information about who might be at home now, stuff like that?"
"No," she answered thoughtfully, apparently seeing that there might be a grain of sense in his attitude. "They just liked Lucy. They asked me if I lived around here, but that was all. They talked funny."
"How?"
"Well, calling me 'sister,' and all like that. Like religious nuts, you know. One of the women asked me if I was ready to be the path, but the others sort of shut her up. She acted a little bit like she was stoned."
Ken slowed down as he passed the strangers again. There were two men and three women, he saw now, and that sexual distribution made the group seem a little less intimidating. They avoided looking at him as they ambled along.
He slowed the car, then impulsively jammed on the brakes. He leaned out the window. "You people looking for something?" he called in a hard voice.
He regretted his act as one of the men, a bearded, wild-eyed scarecrow in a hat suggestive of Simple Simon, loped across the road at a poorly coordinated gait and thrust his face so close that Ken was forced to recoil into the car. Several of his front teeth were missing.
"We are looking for the way, brother. Can you show it to us?" he asked in a tense whisper.
"Oh, for God's sake," Ken growled, accelerating so hastily that the man was forced to spring back.
"I think he was putting you on," Melody said. "He wasn't talking that crazy before."
"Well, let's see how he talks to the police. I plan to call them when we get home."
"Oh, Ken," she sighed, sounding annoyingly like her mother. "They're just taking a walk."
He sped up the winding driveway. As Melody and Lucifer went into the house, he stayed to look back the way they had come. Not much of the road was visible from the top of the drive. He waited for what seemed the proper length of time, but the strangers didn't appear. Maybe his no-nonsense manner had persuaded them to turn back. He decided that was so.
He went slowly into the house, trying to recapture the sense of reasonableness and detachment from his problems that he had achieved before. Melody and those hippies had blown it completely away. He'd told her a million times that he didn't want that damned hound in his car, slobbering all over the upholstery, but she'd smuggled him in under cover of the distraction. He found it hard to control his anger over that transgression, even though he told himself that it was relatively unimportant.
"Hi, Dad," Roger said, regarding him with Marcia's dark eyes from the top of the stairs. "Can we go to the movies?"
"What?"
"Mom says it's OK, if you say it's OK."
He rumpled Roger's hair as he passed, unable to adjust his mind to deal with that question. What had made Marcia so damned certain he would come home at all? And why was she shunting onto him the burden of saying no? His anger was so close to the surface that he hesitated for a moment, on the verge of leaving. He didn't want his irritation to erupt over some trifle.
"It's probably too late. You have to go to school in the morning."
"Tomorrow's Saturday," Roger said, "and we can go to the nine o'clock show."
"We'll see," Ken said, hoping that would hold the question in abeyance.
At the phone in the living room, Ken talked to a desk sergeant who made an elaborate project of taking down his name and address, and who then questioned him closely about his observations. He began to feel that his worries were foolish, as the sergeant so obviously did; but a visit by a patrol car was promised.
He was just hanging up as Marcia entered. "We'd better eat now, if we're going to the movies," she said.
"I didn't say we were going to the movies."
"Roger thinks you did. Anyway, it's all ready."
"I'm not especially hungry," he said, taking the bottle of gin he had brought home into the kitchen.
"I didn't suppose you would be. Are you going with us, or what?"
Her tone was cool, uninterested. She wouldn't ask him where he'd been last night. But, for the next couple of days, she would treat him with the aloof politeness of a stranger on a train, forced by circumstances to communicate with him.
"I'll go," he said, trying to disconcert her; but not succeeding. "What's playing?"
"Some sci-fi flick the kids want to see. Except Melody."
He took a glass from the freezer and filled it with warm gin. Maybe he ought to suggest that Melody couldn't be trusted alone in the house; maybe that would be a way of bringing up the subject and ventilating their grievances. But while he was still considering the remark, Marcia left the room. He didn't know how, but he had been maneuvered into a disagreeable position. Maybe this was his punishment for staying out all night: sitting through a science-fiction film designed to appeal to children, stewing in a brew of unspoken arguments beside a chilly, uncommunicative wife. He topped off his drink and went out to meet the police.
Darkness had fallen, and he couldn't see the road at all now. He went down the driveway, walking less surely than he believed he was capable of doing. He stopped a moment, making an effort to bring himself under more careful control. Lucifer dashed past, barking.
"Shut up! Shut up, you damned dog! Come here!"
Lucifer ignored him.
He cursed under his breath as he continued down the driveway, his steps steadier. If he poisoned the dog, who would suspect him?
He stopped at the gate in the rustic fence that surrounded his property. It wasn't too dark to see that the road was empty. The hippies had turned back or passed on; or else they were lurking in the shrubbery. The latter seemed unlikely, because Lucifer no longer barked. He sat placidly by the mailbox, occasionally snapping at an invisible bug.
"Poison you, and divorce your mother," he said, addressing the dog in a pleasantly conversational tone, "and send your sister to the booby hatch. And then what? Marry my girlfriend, the teen-age carhop, and live happily ever after. Shit!"
None of his plans seemed realistic, but he couldn't put his finger on their exact faults. Perhaps he was unwilling to do so. He paced back and forth at the margin of the road, kicking at occasional bits of discarded rubbish. His eye fell on something hanging at his gate.
He thought at first that it was a child's purse, perhaps one of Karen's possessions, and he went to retrieve it. Then he saw that it was fastened to the gate by a firm and elaborate knot in its rawhide drawstring. He wouldn't have noticed it at all, if he hadn't trampled some weeds by the gate in his pacing.
There was something in the purse; he could feel that. But it couldn't be opened without untying the knot. He finished his drink, set the glass aside, and began to fumble with the thong. The knot was too tight, and his fingernails were too closely trimmed. He took the normally useless little penknife that had come with his key ring and began to saw the thong.
Lucifer came over to supervise the operation. He unexpectedly began barking, as if at the bag.
"Shut up, you moron!" Ken snarled at the dog, who was barking savagely while backing steadily away.
The thong came free. Ken didn't recognize the bag as one of Karen's toys. It was made of soft leather, dyed in a faded red and yellow design. It seemed too well made and expensive for a child's plaything. He pulled it open and dumped the contents into his hand, convulsively dropping everything as the dead body of a toad tumbled into his upturned palm.
"For Christ's sake," he muttered, fumbling for his key ring in the weeds.
He found his keys. He studied the ground nearby. It was quite dark now. He flicked on his lighter. The stony eye of the toad glittered. Its body had been nailed to a tiny wooden cross. Some odd-looking pebbles lay near it, but Ken couldn't tell whether or not they had been among the contents of the bag. He picked up the bag and shook it, but it was now empty. It had a pleasant odor of vaguely familiar spices. He picked up the crucified toad with distaste and flung it into the woods.
Lucifer was barking on the other side of the road. Ken turned, glimpsed a flurry of motion.
"Hold it, you! What are you doing here?"
A slim little figure in a peasant skirt stepped out of the shadows. He recognized Nora Curtis.
"Taking a walk. And what are you doing, playing mumbletypeg?"
He straightened up, brushing the knees of his trousers, grinning foolishly.
"Some damned hippies came by here and left a hex-sign on my gate."
"A what?"
"Some kind of nonsense. A dead toad in a bag. I talked to them before. They were crazy. Religious nuts of some kind."
"What did you do with it?" she asked, inspecting the bag with no more than polite curiosity.
"Threw it away. What else?"
"Maybe that's bad luck."
"Don't be silly. I called the police, but they haven't showed up yet. Did you see anyone on your walk?"
She shook her head.
A thought struck him, that perhaps this had nothing to do with the oddballs he'd seen: this might be another manifestation of Melody's craziness. He must have revealed some of his anger and despair on his face, because Nora was looking up at him with intense interest, even concern. He found himself becoming acutely aware, not for the first time, that her eyes were lovely. In daylight, they were a fascinating shade of green. In darkness, they appeared black and fathomless. Her face was smooth, the features cleanly molded, like an ivory mask. He took a reflexive step backward, and she smiled.
"What are you afraid of?" she murmured. "I hardly ever bite."
"I'm afraid I'm a little drunk." His voice sounded hoarse.
"I thought that was supposed to release inhibitions," she said, moving even closer than she had been before, "not create them."
The invitation in her voice and her manner seemed obvious, even blatant, but Ken still hesitated. He knew he had drunk too much this afternoon, and he was afraid that he might be totally misinterpreting her signals. But there seemed to be no room for misinterpretation. He realized that the moment had come; if he waited any longer it would be gone. He reached out for her, and she seemed to flow into his arms. Their mouths locked in a kiss as he caressed her trim body. She squirmed, avidly molding herself against him.
He drew back abruptly as, from the corner of his eye, he saw the flashing red light of an approaching police car. Confusion and embarrassment almost prevented him from looking her in the eye. When he did, he saw that she was gazing at him calmly, with subdued amusement. Her smile seemed to promise a lot.