Chapter 7
Some time late in the night he swam partway up out of the well of sleep. Or dreamed he did. He awoke to the sound of voices quarreling. Two voices. A man and a woman.
"...not to let him out of your sight ... except when Carl was watching him...."
"...best I could, Garth ... couldn't keep him penned up in here like an animal ... not my fault Carl didn't do his job right ... like somebody else I can mention...."
"...our purposes, he is an animal. He doesn't even exist ... sound like you're feeling sorry for him, for God's sake! Next thing you'll tell me you like going to bed with him...."
"...told me to go to bed with him...."
"...sure I did. He's your husband, isn't he? But that doesn't mean you have to like it. Do you...? "
Silence ... do you?"
"...better than some I can mention...."
"...bitch! You slut! You utter bitch!"
The sound of a blow, a woman's cry of pain.
Wade tried to struggle up to full consciousness, but the effort was too much. He dropped back, rapidly going under.
"...can't wait any longer. Can't risk it, not since the sister ... tomorrow night we'll do it ... when he's asleep, some time after midnight...."
The voices faded out, and Wade dreamed. He dreamed of a woman he couldn't quite identify. The dream was very dark, but he did smell the sharp odor of gin.
"Just lie back, baby," she crooned in a fuzzy voice. "Let me do it. Let me do it all. You'll like what I do to you!" She worked on his body with her fingers and lips and tongue. She played on his nerve ends like a musical instrument. As her face moved, her head darting and dipping, her hair trailed across his skin like tiny, electric wires. She knew all the right things to do.
His desire started as a core of heat in the center of his being and spread until he was consumed by it, spread until he was in a quivering state of readiness. Soon he was pitching and tossing on the bed. He could hear a constant moaning sound, and he knew it came from him.
"You see, baby?" She chuckled hoarsely. "Now we go! Now we really go!" She rose off the bed, swung one leg across his midsection, and shimmied down, encasing him in silken, pulsing flesh. She drove at him brutally, hips grinding in a frenzy.
His passion burst. A white light exploded behind his eyes, blinding him. A stuttering cry came from the woman astride him. As his hips bucked, she fastened her hands on each side of his rib cage and held on grimly, held their bodies welded together, as her pelvis ground savagely against him. Then it was over. With a guttural groan of content, she slid off him and was gone. And the nylon dream turned into a nightmare out of hell, a nightmare of Easter bunnies bleeding pink, of astringent medicinal odors stinging his nostrils, of faceless men following him, of straitjackets binding him until he screamed his throat raw.
When Wade awoke the next morning, he didn't know what had been a dream, what had been reality. His head throbbed, his mouth had the taste of foulness, and he had trouble focusing his eyes. It took him several minutes to orient himself. Then he glanced at his watch and sat up with a grunt. It was after ten o'clock. He was driven by a sense of urgency. He had to see Lisa, had to find out if the hours spent with her, the way they felt toward each other was a dream as well. He listened. The apartment was very quiet. It occurred to him that the two pills Janis had given him last night must have been sleeping pills, instead of the pills Dr. Hunter had given him.
He got up, showered, and shaved. He felt considerably better after the shower. Dressing, he wondered how he was going to get away from Janis. Feeling in his pocket, he pulled out his hand. Janis had not forgotten to leave him some money. He smiled.
Entering the living room, he discovered it wasn't going to be a problem. Janis was sprawled on her back on the couch, arms and legs akimbo. She was in a robe which was fucked up around her waist, with nothing on underneath. For a frightening moment Wade thought he was reliving that nightmarish instant when he had found Claire's body. He froze in his tracks and it took all his will power to force his legs to carry him to the couch. Then he saw that her mouth hung open and she was snoring softly. There was an empty gin bottle overturned on the carpet a few inches from her trailing hand. Relief swept over him. She wasn't dead, merely stoned to the eyeballs.
He started to turn away, then swung back, leaning down for a closer look. One eye was swelling rapidly, already discolored. She was going to have a beautiful shiner. Could he be wrong in thinking he'd dreamed everything last night? He didn't have time to ponder it now. In the kitchen he found a notepad, tore off a sheet and penned her a short note: "Janis, I'll be back. Don't call the police, Dr. Hunter, or anybody else." He resisted an impulse to sign it Wade, signed Bart instead and pinned it to her robe.
He was hungry and dying for a cup of coffee, but he left the apartment without eating. He had no way of knowing when she'd passed out; she could wake up any minute.
Almost from force of habit he paused just outside the building while he lit a cigarette and glanced both ways along the street. He saw no one. But that didn't mean anything. He was beginning to think that his shadow could follow him without being detected. The times Wade had seen him, he'd let himself be glimpsed on purpose. So that didn't make any kind of sense. What did make sense about this mess he was in?
Except Lisa. That made sense. If Lisa loved him, was with him, when all the fog cleared away, if it ever did, he would be more than content.
He stopped on the way to Lisa's for a hearty breakfast and three cups of black coffee. It was just twelve when he rang the doorbell. There was no response. After a moment, he rang it again and waited, apprehension beginning to prick at him. Then he heard the pad of her footsteps inside.
"Who is it?" Her voice reached him only faintly through the door.
"It's me, Wade."
"Go away! I don't want to see you!"
"What?" He aimed an idiot's gape at the blank door. "What did you say?"
"I said go away!" Her voice gained strength, but it sounded strange, high, and trembling. "Just go away and leave me alone!"
His temper surged. "Now just what the hell is this? I will not go away! Either you let me in, Lisa, or I stay parked out here before your door until I grow a beard down to my knees!"
After a moment the chain rattled as she removed it. The door opened a crack. Wade pushed it wide and went in, fast. Lisa, in sunburst capris and a white sweater, was backing slowly toward the couch, both hands crossed over her lips as though to stifle a scream. The gray eyes were enormous. Her hair was a rat's nest.
Wade's glance raked the living room. He had somehow expected someone to be with her. "Is anyone in here with you?"
She shook her head in mute denial. She had backed until she bumped into the couch. Now she was sidling along the back of the couch, never taking her gaze from him. He took a step toward her, and she cowered away from him.
He stopped. "Then if you're alone, what's got you spooked?" He took a closer look at her and saw that her eyes were puffy and red. She had been crying! Compassion displaced his anger. "Lisa, you've been ... what's wrong? What's happened?" He started toward her again.
She darted around the end of the couch until it stood as a barrier between them. She spoke for the first time since he'd barged through the door. "Stay over there! Don't come near me!"
He stared at her in utter bafflement. "I don't understand all this! What's got into you?"
"I had a visitor this morning.
He stiffened. "A visitor? Who?"
"He said his name was Barnes."
"What did he look like?"
"He was slender, sort of dark, well-dressed..." she broke off. "What difference does that make?"
"What did he want?"
"He said he was a private detective, hired by Janis Evans to watch you when you're away from the apartment. He says you're a schizo and your wife hired him to keep watching you until she can make up her mind whether or not to have you recommitted. She loves you very much and dreads having to send you back to the sanitarium. He said you're dangerous. He followed you all day yesterday and saw you take me out to dinner last night. He came to see me to warn me that I shouldn't ever see you again. If I do, he can't be responsible for what happens."
"I'll just bet he won't be responsible," Wade said absently. His mind was on the dimly remembered conversation he'd overheard, or dreamed, last night. "Did he give you a first name?"
"No, and I didn't ask." Her voice climbed. "What difference does it make what he looks like or if he even has a first name? It's what he said!"
He focused his attention on her, finally realizing the state she was in. "What has changed from last night, Lisa? I told you all this. You didn't learn anything new."
"But it sounds so ... so much more real coming from someone else! If it isn't true, why would anyone go to all that trouble to come here and warn me against you?"
"I don't know the answer to that. I've been wracking my brain and something keeps nudging at the edge of my mind but it's not clear at all." He pounded the heel of his hand against the side of his head in an exaggerated gesture. Then he took a deep breath and said gently, "Lisa, do you really think I'm dangerous?"
"I ... I don't know what to think!" she said wildly. "I don't want to think that, but this man sounded so ... damned convincing!"
It was the first time he'd heard her swear and he knew it revealed the scope of her uncertainty. "If he's who I'm beginning to think he is, he can be very convincing." He smiled at her. "I would never harm you. Even if I were really whacky, I would never do that. Don't you know, Lisa? You must know! I love you."
"Don't say that!" She held both hands but, palms toward him, as though pushing him away.
"I know it's early for me to be saying it, but I do love you. I've never said those words to anyone in my life, Lisa."
"Wade ... please, not now. Not until. ... " Her face was twisted, her voice tortured. He longed to go to her, but he knew it would be a mistake. She smiled brightly, too brightly, and said in a too cheerful voice, "I was just making myself a late breakfast. Could I fix you something?"
"I've had breakfast but you could force a cup of coffee on me." Something within him relaxed a little. He didn't know if she wholly believed him yet, but she wasn't forcing him out.
"I won't promise it to be as good as coffee brewed in an old, battered pot out on the range on a cold morning. Maybe someday...." Her voice died, her glance slid away and she hurried toward the kitchen.
Wade followed her, thinking, Yes, someday!
In the kitchen she tied an apron around her waist and bustled. Wade sat in the breakfast nook, sipping coffee and watching, thinking what an adorably domestic picture she made.
As she bustled, she chattered, as though gripped by nervousness. "I'm a good cook, do you know that?"
"You cook, ride, and herd cattle? Indeed a woman of many talents," he said, laughing.
"I went along on roundups when I could get my father to let me. He thought I was too young to ride then. In those days we had a Chinese cook called Fang. I don't think that was his real name, but the hands called him that because he didn't have a tooth in his head. You know how cowhands are. They called me Big Sister because I was the youngest and the littlest. But Fang was a marvelous cook. The cowhands, even the drifters, always came back and hired on for roundups, because Fang was such a good cook. Most ranch cooks can't even boil water. I'd hang around the camp all day, getting underfoot. And Fang, in self-defense, I think, taught me how to cook."
She never once glanced at him while she talked. But Wade was content to lean back and listen to the run of her voice. She brought a great platter of ham and scrambled eggs, a plate of biscuits to the table, and attacked the food with a large appetite, talking in between bites.
"Claire didn't cook. She hated anything domestic. She had a woman who came in to cook for her or she ate out. I couldn't put up with that. After I'd lived with her a few days, I made her let the woman go and I did the cooking. She even gained a few pounds. At first. Until she went back on drugs again." Her face darkened. She sat for a moment with her head down, brown hair falling around her face like wings.
To break the tension, Wade reached over for a biscuit, buttered it and spread it with jam. He took a bite. "Hey! These are good! They're light enough to fly like a bird."
Her head came up and she smiled. For the first time he noticed the slight indent of a dimple in her right cheek. She bobbed her head. "Thank you, sir. All compliments accepted and filed for future reference."
Her brief melancholy gone, she chattered on. She drew Wade into the conversation and they talked again of cow country. By the time she was done eating, he was swept up in it, his troubles momentarily forgotten. She leaned on the table on her elbows, chin propped on one hand, her face bright and animated. When he paused for a moment, she said, "I don't realize how much I miss all that when I'm away until I talk to somebody like you, darling."
A tingle went through him at the endearment. He was certain it had slipped out. That was all right; it could only mean that she had forgotten her fears of an hour ago.
When she got up and started clearing the table, he got up, too. "The least I can do is wash the dishes."
Half turned away, she turned a laughing face toward him. "Who ever heard of a cowhand washing dishes?"
"This cowhand, ma'am, has washed many a dish."
He seized the apron strings and pulled. The apron came off. Lisa turned towards him, still laughing. She was very close to him, so close he could feel her breath warm on his face. Without volition he started to put his arms around her.
She leaped back, stumbling in her haste, and had to catch at the table for support. Her eyes flared with unreasoning terror. "No! Don't touch me!" Her voice went high and shrill. "Don't touch me!"