He stood looking at her.
She was bending over the croquet rack. She’d loosened her halter while she’d been lying in the sun, and it hung down almost off her breasts as she leaned over. Even in the dim light, he could see the distinct line of demarcation where tanned flesh became milk-white.
No, he heard someone begging in his mind. No, get back. She’ll see you.
Catherine leaned over a little more, reaching for a ball, and the halter slipped.
“Oops,” said Catherine, putting things to order. Scott’s head fell back against the wall. It was damply cool in there, but wings of heat were buffeting his cheeks.
When Catherine had gone and locked the door behind her, Scott came out. He put the bag and book on the chair and stood there feeling as if every joint and muscle were swollen and hot.
“I can’t,” he muttered, shaking his head slowly. “I can’t. I can’t.” He didn’t know what he meant exactly, but he knew it was something important.
“How old’s that girl?” he asked that evening, not even glancing up from his book, as though the question had just, idly and unimportantly, occurred to him.
“Sixteen, I think,” Lou answered.
“Oh,” he said, as if he had already forgotten why he asked.
***
Sixteen. Age of pristine possibility. Where had he heard that phrase?
He shook it off, crouching on the boxes, a delicately limbed dwarf in corduroy rompers, looking out bleakly at the rain, watching the drops spatter on the ground, splashing freckles of mud on the windowpanes. His face was a mask of expressionless defeat. It shouldn’t have precipitated, thought his mind. Oh, it shouldn’t have.
He hiccuped. Then, with a tired sigh, he climbed down the pile and walked unsteadily to the chair. He jolted back in it and—whoops! —he caught the whisky bottle as it almost toppled off the arm. O bottle of booze beloved! He snickered.
The cellar was a haze of gelatine around his bobbing head. He tilted back the bottle and let the whisky trickle hot in his throat, burning in his stomach.
His eyes watered. I am drinking Catherine! his mind cried fiercely. I have distilled her, synthesizing loins and breasts and stomach and sixteen years of them into a conflagrating liquor, which I drink— so. His throat moved convulsively as the whisky gurgled down. Drink, drink! And it shall make thy belly bitter, but it shall be in thy mouth sweet as honey.
Drunk I am and drunk I mean to stay, he thought. He wondered why it had never occurred to him before. This bottle that he held before him now had stood in the cupboard for three months and, before that, two months in the old apartment. Five months of suffering neglect. He patted the brown glass bottle; he kissed it fervently. I kiss thee, Catherine liquefied. I buss the distillation of thy warm, sugared lips.
Simple, came the thought, because she is so much smaller than Lou, that’s why I feel like this.
He sighed. He swung the empty bottle over his lap. Catherine gone. Down the hatch with Catherine. Sweet girl, you swim now in my veins, a dizzying potion.
He jumped up suddenly and flung the bottle with all his might against the wall. It exploded sharply and a hundred whisky-fragrant scraps of glass danced across the cool cement. Good-by, Catherine.
He stared at the window. Why’d it have to rain? he thought. Oh, why’d it? Why couldn’t it be sunny so the pretty girl could lie outside in her bathing suit and he could stare at her and lust in secret, sick vicariousness?
No, it had to rain; it was in the stars.
He sat on the edge of the chair swinging his legs. Upstairs there were no footsteps. What was she doing? What was the pretty girl doing? Not pretty— ugly. What was the ugly girl doing? Who cared whether she was pretty or ugly? What was the girl doing.
He watched his feet swinging in the air. He kicked out. Take that, air; and that.
He groaned. He got up and paced around. He stared at the rain and the mud-spattered windows. What time was it? Couldn’t be more than noon. He couldn’t take this much longer.
He went up the steps and pushed at the door. It was locked, of course, and Louise had taken all the keys with her this time. “Fire her!” he’d yelled that morning. “She’s dishonest!” and Lou had answered, “We can’t, Scott. We simply can’t. I’ll take the keys. It’ll be all right.”
He braced his back against the door and reared up. It hurt his back. He gasped angrily at the air and butted his head against the door. He fell down on the step, dizziness clouding his brain.
He sat there mumbling, hands pressing at his skull. He knew why he wanted the girl discharged. It was because he couldn’t stand to look at her, and it was far beyond his ability to tell Lou about it. The most she could do would be to make one more insulting offer. He wouldn’t take that.
He straightened up, smiling in the shadows.
Well, I fooled her, he said. I fooled her and sneaked a whisky bottle down, and she never knew.
He sat there, breathing heavily, thinking about Catherine leaning over the croquet rack, about her halter slipping.
He stood abruptly, banging his head again. He jumped down the steps, ignoring the pain. And I’ll fool her again!
He managed to feel grimly justified as he climbed the box pile clumsily. A drunken, crooked grin on his face, he knocked up the hook on the window and shoved at the bottom of its frame. It stuck. His face got red as he pushed at it. Get out, goddam your stupid bones!
“Son-of-a—”
The window flew out and he flopped across the ledge. The window flew back in and banged the top of his head. The hell with it! His teeth were gritted. Now , he dizzily told the world. Now we’ll see. He crawled out into the rain, not fighting at all against the vicious dredging of heat in him.
He stood up and shivered. His eyes fled up to the dining-room window and the rain drizzled in his eyes and ran across his face and spattered on his cheeks. What now? he thought. The cold air and rain were cooling off the surface of impulsion.
Deliberately he walked around the house, staying close to the brick base until he’d reached the porch. Then he ran to the steps and up them. What are you doing? he asked. He didn’t know. His mind was not conducting the tour.
He stood on tiptoe and cautiously looked into the dining room. No one was there. He listened but didn’t hear anything. The door to Beth’s room was shut; she must be taking a nap. His gaze moved to the bathroom door. It was shut.
He sank back on his heels and sighed. He licked raindrops from his lips. Now what? he asked again.
Inside the house, the bathroom door opened.
With a start, Scott backed away from the window, hearing footsteps pad across the kitchen floor, then fade. He thought she’d gone into the living room and edged to the window again, pushed up on his toes.
His breath stopped. She was standing at the window looking out at the yard. She was holding a yellow bath towel in front of her.
He couldn’t feel the rain spattering off him, crisscrossing like cold, unrolling ribbons across his face. His mouth hung open. His gaze moved slowly down the smooth concavity of her back, the indentation of her spine a thin shadow that ran down and was lost between the muscular half-moons of her white buttocks.
He couldn’t take his eyes from her. His hands shook at his sides. She stirred and he saw the glitter of water drops on her, quivering like tiny blobs of gelatine. He sucked in a ragged, rain-wet breath.
Catherine dropped the towel.
She put her hands behind her head and drank in a heavy breath. Scott saw her left breast swing up and stand out tautly, the nipple like a dark spear point. Her arms moved out. She stretched and writhed.
When she turned he was still in the same tense, muscle-quivering pose. He shrank back, but she didn’t see him because the top of his head was barely higher than the window sill. He saw her bend over and pick up the towel, her breasts hanging down, white and heavy. She stood up and walked out of the room.
He sank down on his heels and had to clutch at the railing t
o keep his legs from going limp beneath him. He half hung there, shaking in the rain, a stark look on his face.
After a minute he stumbled weakly down the steps and around the house to the cellar window. He crawled through and locked the window behind him. He climbed down the hill of boxes, still shuddering.
He sat on the lawn chair, an old sweater wrapped around himself. His teeth were chattering, and he shivered uncontrollably.
Later he took his clothes off and hung them on the oil burner to dry. He stood by the fuel tank in his brown, hightopped shoes, holding the sweater around his shoulders, staring up at the window. And finally, when he couldn’t bear the stillness or the pressure or the thoughts a second longer, he began to kick the cardboard carton. He kicked it until his leg ached and the cardboard side was split almost to the floor.
***
“But how did you get a cold?” Lou asked, her voice carrying a note of exasperation.
His voice was nasal and thick. “What do you expect when I’m stuck in that damn cellar all day!”
“I’m sorry, darling, but… well, shall I stay home tomorrow so you can stay in bed all day?”
“Don’t bother,” he said.
She didn’t mention that she’d noticed that the whisky bottle was gone from the kitchen cupboard.
If Lou had been able to lock the windows, too, it would have been all right. But knowing he could get out any time he wanted; knowing that he could spy on Catherine, made it an impossible situation.
Hours dragged in the cellar. He might manage to absorb himself in a book for an hour or two, but ultimately the vision of Catherine would flit across his mind and he would put down the book.
If Catherine had come out in the yard more often, it would have been all right. Then, at least, he could look at her through the window. But days were getting colder as September waned, and Catherine and Beth stayed in the house most of the time.
He had taken to bringing a small clock to the cellar. He’d told Lou he wanted to be able to keep track of the time, but what he really wanted was to be able to know when Beth was napping. Then he could go out and peer through the windows at Catherine.
One day she might be on the couch reading a magazine, and there would be no satisfaction. But the next day she might be ironing, and, for some reason, when she ironed she always took off part of her clothes. Another time she might take a shower and, afterward, stand naked at the back window. And once she had lain naked in the bedroom under the skin-purpling glare of Lou’s portable sun lamp. That had been one cloudy afternoon and she hadn’t drawn the shades all the way down. He’d stood outside for thirty minutes and never budged.
Days kept passing. Reading was almost forgotten. Life had become one unending morbid adventure. Almost every afternoon at two o’clock, after having sat in shaking excitement for an hour or more, he would crawl out into the yard and walk secretively around the house, climbing up and peering over the sills of every window, looking for Catherine.
If she were partly or completely nude, he counted the day a success. If she was, as was most often the case, dressed and engaged in some dull occupation, he would return angrily to the cellar to sulk out the afternoon and snap at Louise all evening.
Whatever happened, though, he would lie awake at night, waiting for the morning to come, hating and despising himself for being so impatient, but still impatient. Sleep grew turgid with dreams of Catherine; dreams in which she grew progressively more alluring. Finally he even gave up scoffing at the dreams.
In the mornings he would eat hastily and go down to the cellar for the long wait until two o’clock, when, heart pounding, he would crawl out through the window again to spy.
The end of it came with shocking suddenness.
He was on the porch. In the kitchen, Catherine was standing naked under Lou’s open bathrobe, ironing some clothes.
He shifted his feet, slipped, and thumped down on the boards. Inside, he heard Catherine call out, “Who’s there?”
Gasping, he jumped down the step and started running around the house, looking over his shoulder in fright, to see a frozen-faced Catherine standing at the kitchen window, gaping at his fleeing childlike form.
All that afternoon he stood shivering behind the water tank, unable to come out because, even though she hadn’t seen him go into the cellar, he was sure she was looking in through the window. And he cursed himself and felt sickly wretched thinking about what Lou would say to him and how she would look at him when she knew.
***
He lay still under the box top, listening to the scratching clamber of the spider over the cardboard.
He moistened his lips with a sluggish tongue and thought of the pool of cold water in the hose. He felt around with his hand until it closed over a fragment of damp cracker; then he decided he was too thirsty to eat and his hand drew back again.
For some reason the sound of the spider’s crawling didn’t bother him too much. He sensed that he was beyond stark disruption, lying in the shallows of emotion, spent and quiescent. Even memory failed to hurt. Yes, even the memory of the month they’d discovered the antitoxin and injected him three times with it—to no avail. All past laments were undone by the drag of present illness and exhaustion.
I’ll wait, he told himself, until the spider is gone, and then I’ll go through the cool darkness and walk over the cliff and that will be the end of it. Yes, that’s what I’ll do. I’ll wait until the spider’s gone and then I’ll go over the cliff and that will be the end of it.
He slept, heavily, motionlessly. And, in his dream, he and Lou were walking in September rain, talking as they went. And he said, “Lou, I had an awful dream last night. I dreamed I was as small as a pin.”
And she smiled and kissed his cheek and said, “Now, wasn’t that a foolish dream?”
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Richard Matheson Suspense Novels Page 14