“Haven’t you?” Bernice said.
“Lord, no. Look at the calendar, child. You know what day it is? It’s the nineteenth, that’s what it is. I was out all night long convincing Al Brennan that he doesn’t look a day over thirty-five. Positively not a day over. The inflated old bag!”
Bernice felt a chill clamp down around her heart. Lassitude slid through her limbs, leaving her weak and unwholesome. She simply had to sit down. She sank loosely to the bench beside Rita.
The old voices, the old childlike crying screamed through her brain. I won’t stand it. I won’t stand it. I won’t stand it. I’ll die before I’ll let them do it to me again. I won’t stand it. I won’t let them. They can’t hurt me like this again.
“McMillan?” she whispered.
“Sure, McMillan,” Rita said. “Somebody is going to get that job. Only now I know who that somebody is. Me. Rita Baehrs. Omaha girl makes good.”
“But you—you’ve only been here—”
“A year? Sure. So what? I’ve got the body for it, haven’t I? I’ve got what Al Brennan thinks every thirty-five-year-old man should want, haven’t I? Those are my qualifications. And baby, they’re good enough for Brennan. Today he announces to the staff that Miss Rita Baehrs—get that Miss—will replace Miss Jane McMillan as of the twentieth.”
But Bernice wasn’t even hearing the last of it. She knew that Rita was telling the whole truth. Rita had got that job with the only qualifications that mattered at all. What a fool Bernice had been to believe Al Brennan! It only went to show you. Hope sprang eternal in the chest of a fool. Her face was straight and she managed to congratulate Rita. But inside she was weeping and screaming like a baby, and wishing to God that she were dead.
Bernice returned to Deerman’s office. She waited until Deerman told her how badly he needed her because he could trust her.
“If you need me,” Bernice said, “I’ll go. I wanted you to know it wasn’t simply the money.”
His rugged face lighted up about the dark rims of his blackened glasses. For a moment Bernice was afraid he was going to fall on his knees and kiss the hem of her skirt or something.
When she moved from her mother’s apartment to the Bronx, it was clear that Bernice was going to live in a world of luxury and sin. And what were the neighbors going to think?
“What are the neighbors going to think with?” Bernice demanded.
Deerman couldn’t keep his hands off her. He tried, but when they were alone in the house his hands would close over hers, or his arm would go about her.
On the third day she brought him a letter to sign. He was standing beside his desk. It was as close as she had ever been to him, her thigh brushing the inner side of his leg. He pulled her close against him. She could feel the banging of his heart. And she had never realized there was such strength as there was in his big arms.
What was the matter with her? What was happening to her? She hated him, didn’t she? What made her writhe under the pressure of his big hands? Why did she seem to be on fire, all hollow in her loins, and whisky-hot? The delicious flow of that warmth fused through her, and though she felt feverish, she quivered as if she were cold.
He pulled her in closer, holding her to him hard and tight so her body could feel his body. She tried to remain rigid in his arms. He pressed in against her. She could feel the heat from him, the strength of him, and the hardness of his muscles. His breath was hot and his mouth closed over hers.
Her breath quickened, her throat felt tight and dry. She was weak in her legs so she had to slump against him for support. Her hands were icy and bloodless, without strength to push him away. It all happened with frantic speed. It had never happened to her before, and she didn’t even know what it was. She didn’t know what was happening to her. Her head reeled, she thought she would faint. She was on fire, aching to thrust herself against him, needing to—and hating herself because she hated Lloyd.
She had never known such excitement as there was coursing through his body and making her body limp with the throbbing heat of it. She had to feel it, and she had to feel her own writhing need to respond. But she hated him, and she couldn’t help hating him. The thought that it was Lloyd touching her made her shrivel up and set the vinegar to flowing in her veins, and her body went stiff against his.
When he released her, she almost fell. He stepped back away from her.
“Why do I care?” he said. “Why is it everybody wants what they can’t have? Why do I want you so badly, Bernice, when I know you don’t want me at all?”
One night a week later he called her on her extension of the telephone. He was in his bedroom. “Come up here, Bernice,” he told her. “I need you. I can’t stand this.”
She went. She was in her pajamas and her bathrobe, and barefooted. And she went like that. She even considered walking in stark naked. It didn’t matter. He couldn’t see her. The whole damn thing was the worst kind of mockery. She wanted to be desired, but not like this.
She pushed open his bedroom door. He was sitting on the side of his bed. His pajama shirt was unbuttoned. His dark glasses were off. His face turned toward the door at the sound of its opening. For the first time she saw the whiteness of his naked, sightless eyes.
She caught her breath. He heard her. The smile died. His shoulders sagged. He turned from her and grabbed up a fifth of whisky. He poured himself a drink. He didn’t spill a drop. In this house he was master. He could wait on himself, find anything he wanted.
“Where did you get that?” she demanded.
“What do you care where I got it?” he said. “What does anybody care?” He drained off the glass, poured another.
“Don’t drink that!” she told him. “You know what will happen.”
“Sure. I know. I’ll drink myself to death, and who’ll give a damn? Let me alone. Get out of here. I’m alone. That’s the way it’s got to be. That’s the way I want it.”
She went over, wrested the bottle from his hand, and smashed it across the radiator. Steam rose and the smell pervaded the room.
“Sleep in it!” she told him. “Sleep with it! Feel sorry for yourself!”
He twisted around and sprawled across the bed. A sob racked his thick, broad shoulders. Bernice walked slowly out of the room.
The next day he was all right. At nine o’clock he called her to help him down the stairs. They had breakfast together, the girl who wanted to be admired, and the man who wanted to be loved. The start of another beautiful day, Bernice thought bitterly.
They went to work in the study. Lloyd called to her and told her to bring him an account book from the shelf above her. She stood on a small ladder and lifted one of the books down. When she opened it she caught her breath. She bit down on her underlip and set the book quietly on her desk.
“It’s the one marked ‘Open Account’!” Lloyd snapped. “Can’t anybody around this place find anything?”
She took the book he wanted to him and returned to the one on her desk. She opened it. It was hollowed. In it were ten stacks of money, secured with rubber bands. The least of them were hundred-dollar bills. She had no idea yet how much was there—many thousands. With the cover turned back, she stared.
Maybe it began there, she thought savagely. How’s that for a beginning, Mr. Findlay?
Three
There was only one way for Bernice to have that money.
It never occurred to her that she wasn’t going to have it. She could have married Lloyd and had all his money. But at twenty-four, Bernice knew what she wanted. She knew she wanted only one thing. She wanted to be treated the way beautiful women are treated. Marrying Lloyd Deerman wouldn’t get her that. Not even if she could have stomached the idea at all. A few knowing looks. A few smart laughs. Pity. That’s what she’d get married to Lloyd.
She couldn’t steal it. She knew better than that. Not even slowly. Not even a few dollars at a time. He would miss it. And that wasn’t the way she wanted that money, anyhow. She wanted it all at once.
That first night, she stood staring at the thick, tight stacks of money in the false-fronted account book. She wondered, why does he keep this money hidden here? Why separate from his banking accounts?
Bernice felt she knew the answer to that, too. She made a careful, secret audit of his accounts. This money was nowhere itemized. It was free, apart from all his listed assets. No one knew he had it hidden. Blind and growing daily more suspicious and resentful, Lloyd mistrusted even the banks in the dark world in which he existed.
She remembered what Dr. Talbot Mundy had told her. “Many blind men are well adjusted, Bernice. They’ve reconciled themselves. Made their peace. Accepted their lot. They lead almost normal lives. Do carpentry, masonry, plumbing, and become business and professional leaders. Even Lloyd is highly successful. He has spoken to law, medical, and professional groups all over the country. But a strange thing has been happening to him. I don’t know what it is, but I do know it’s like a malignant growth. The best name I can find for it is simply resentment. When he was younger, Lloyd did everything in the world to prove he was as good blind as any two men who could see. He crossed busy streets alone. He remembered addresses.
He could leave my office and go downtown to a bar or a restaurant or even the offices of acquaintances, unaided. He began to be successful. The more successful he became, the more resentful he became. He had proved to himself and the world that he could conquer it without his eyes. Poor devil. He found out the reaction was: So what? More sincere men than one are beaten by that reaction to their merit. “He has been steadily withdrawing into himself. Living alone in this old house until you came. Drinking himself unconscious. Alienating any who tried to help him. He wants to be accepted for himself and it has embittered him because he is not.”
That first night she replaced the big book in its niche on the shelf. Her heart was pounding. Her fingers were bloodless and cold. She had to force herself to work.
By midnight, Lloyd was asleep. Bernice tiptoed down the stairs. She drew the blinds at the windows of the study, locked the foyer door. By the small shaded light over her desk she counted the money. There was over twenty-four thousand dollars.
At first she was disappointed. But only at first. She replaced the book again, turned off the lights, retraced her steps up to her bedroom. She was smiling. There was something perfect about that amount. Adequate. Almost inconspicuous. Easy to handle, hide, conceal. Yet enough to buy for herself what she wanted. Perfect.
She lay breathless and sweated on her pillow. Almost as she had in those nights when she’d dreamed of boys. She tried to tell herself that she just could not imagine any way that money could ever be hers.
But she knew she lied.
She knew the only way she could ever have it.
She had known it from the first moment.
She couldn’t force her mind beyond that point. Not at first. Not for the first few nights. She would lie awake and think about that money. The things it would buy. The places it would take her. And then she would realize she was fatigued. Tired all over her body. Her mind would refuse to concentrate any more. And she would sleep...
... And she would walk into a room. A room where inverted mushrooms were painted on the walls and ceilings and floors. Greens and reds and pink. There was something upsetting about the way they were painted. They stirred her. Upset her. Frightened her in a way that wasn’t fright at all.
Attracted and repelled by the gaudy room, she started across it. There was Rita Baehrs before her. She wanted to hate Rita. Rita had taken Al Brennan to bed in order to get Jane McMillan’s job. Rita had taken that job from Bernice. Bernice had a right to hate her. But Bernice smiled when she wanted to sneer. She hurried forward. And Rita smiled and came running toward Bernice. But in the center of the room there was a small bridge between them. It was made of white plaster. It spanned an odd-shaped pool of water. Red water. Blood-red water. At the bridge, Bernice stopped, shivering and cold. Across on the other side, Rita stopped too. Rita beckoned. Then Bernice saw that the girl on the other side of the blood-red pool wasn’t Rita Baehrs at all.
It was she. It was Bernice. Only she was so lovely that she hadn’t even recognized herself. She smiled and the lovely Bernice smiled back. She laughed. She began to laugh hysterically. The room shook with her laughter. Ripples spun around on the surface of the red pool. The gaudy mushrooms stretched and elongated and slithered on the wall like bright serpents. The room quavered and trembled as she laughed. She couldn’t stop laughing. She could only go on laughing until she cried. The tears wet her cheeks, and she woke up laughing...
When finally you admit that you are going to kill a man, your obsession takes over. You begin to plan how you can do it—and get away with it.
Bernice took her time. The weeks passed. Sometimes it seemed to her she wasn’t planning at all. Sometimes she told herself it was just a joke. It was just something she thought about to make her life with Lloyd bearable.
But not a day passed that Bernice didn’t count the money.
Lloyd himself suggested that she select from the library any books that seemed frayed or smudged and send them out to be rebound.
And so he set the day for his own execution.
He knew nothing about it, of course. It seemed to him that life had never been so fine between him and Bernice. The world might still be unfriendly, but Bernice pleased him. She spoke warmly to him. She was even responsive when he touched her, and she laughed at his jokes.
As far as she was concerned, he was already dead.
The bindery men called for the books. Bernice demanded to know the earliest possible date that they could expect to get the books back. The men were only clerks and had no idea. Lloyd was listening. He applauded Bernice. They called the office of the bookbinders and a date was set for the return of the books.
Good, Bernice thought. When they send them, I won’t be here.
The night Lloyd was to die arrived.
Bernice had a fifth of good whisky locked in her study desk drawer. She’d bought an expensive, highly recommended brand.
At eight, Gilman, Lloyd’s butler, said good night. He left through the front door. Bernice locked it after him.
There were two doors in the rear, and a side entrance that once had opened on the carriage drive. The drive had long ago been closed. The door was seldom used. Bernice merely checked it. She wanted only to be sure that it was bolted. Then she locked the two rear doors.
There was nothing unusual in this. She checked the doors and locked them every night. Only now, she was reasonably sure no one would walk in.
She went about the lower floor of the house slowly. She turned off all lights except the work lamp on her study desk. She pulled the shades, not tightly, but enough so that no one could see whether she was at her desk or not.
She inserted letterhead paper, carbon, and second sheet, and transcribed maybe a third of a letter Lloyd had dictated that afternoon.
Only then did she remove the false-fronted account book from the shelf. She looked once at the money inside it. She felt the breath seep across her dry lips.
This was the weak part of the whole business, she told herself bitterly. She had to get that book out of the house.
She had not dared move it too soon, for she had no way of knowing when Lloyd would check on that book. She had never seen him even go near it, but that didn’t mean that he wasn’t acutely aware of it. She had learned that Lloyd had a sense for things that people who see never develop. This was the first possible moment she could dare move the book.
She had discarded a dozen plans. She had thought of wrapping it securely and addressing it to herself at her mother’s home in the Bronx. There were a lot of holes in that. Her mother might very well forward it right back here. My lovely mother, Bernice thought. Besides, detectives had such damnable ways of walking and walking and walking. If one of them walked far enough, he was bound to question a delivery agency. A receipt showing a parcel delivered from this address, this
night. Oh, no.
She even thought of mailing the package to herself at General Delivery. Suppose they watched her? All she had to do was call at the General Delivery window for a package, be stopped, questioned, searched...
She got an old brief case of Lloyd’s. She tied up the book and closed it in the brief case. She put on a hat and lightweight coat and left the house. She walked a block, entered a subway kiosk, and rode up to her mother’s home.
A block from her mother’s apartment she went into a drugstore. She entered a pay booth and called her mother. “Miz Harper,” she said, slurring the words, “could you come over to Miz Goldman’s already? You haven’t heard what is happened?”
“I’ll be right over,” her mother said. “I’ll be right over.”
Bernice walked the rest of the way. This was the place where she’d grown up. It was dark. Kids were playing in the street. Grownups lolled on the steps watching the kids. She walked through them, eyes straight ahead. She entered the rear of the apartment house. She used her key, let herself into the apartment. She went into her bedroom. Her mother hadn’t changed anything. It was all as Bernice had left it.
In her room there were the same sort of secret places that there were in Bernice’s mind. She’d always loved to hide things. She stored them up, the way she stored up resentments and hurts and loneliness. She hid the book. She let herself out of the apartment, returned along the walk as she had come, made perfect subway connections. At nine she re-entered Lloyd’s house.
He was yelling for her. He was at the head of the stairs when she came in the front door. “Where did you go?” he demanded.
“I went out,” she told him, as women have been telling men who ask too many questions—any questions—since time began.
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