Fires That Destroy

by Harry Whittington

  Cookie dragged the back of her hand across her forehead to wipe away a stray wisp of hair. “Come on in.”

  The apartment was very small. The front room was eight by ten, divided from a kitchenette by a built-in bookcase that was a dish cabinet on its reverse side. The furniture was all new, impossibly uncomfortable stuff. The rooms were bright with fresh paint and there were Venetian blinds and frilly white curtains at the windows.

  The front room was in disarray. Ash trays were overflowing. Glasses made rings on the tables. And more of that damned beach sand trailed across the rugs.

  Cookie flopped on the divan and motioned Bernice to a chair. Bernice tried to take assurance from the fact that she was fashionably dressed, and that Cookie looked like a hangover. But she was aware that Cookie seemed perfectly at ease. There was even something more than faintly patronizing in her manner.

  Bernice’s hands were trembling. She sat awkwardly on one of the uncomfortable chairs. She could hear those old bottomless voices stirring inside her. Where was the role she had planned to play here this morning? The expensively attired wife talking down frankly to a cheap little waitress?

  “You’ve been seeing my husband,” Bernice blurted.

  Cookie smiled at her. “Frequently.”

  “You’ve got to stop.”

  “Why?”

  “He’s my husband.”

  “I don’t force him to come to see me. Do you force him to come to see me?”

  “There are different kinds of force.”

  “And you’re mad because you haven’t got that kind, is that it?”

  “If you’re cheap enough, if you throw yourself at a man, I suppose you can make him notice you and want you, no matter what you are.”

  “Not if he’s contented at home.”

  “No man is contented at home when some strange little bitch is throwing herself at him.”

  “Let’s keep it friendly. You’re getting hysterical.”

  “Why shouldn’t I?”

  “It won’t help you any, that’s why. You came over here to tell me that I’ve got to stop seeing your husband. And I’m telling you that I’m here. He comes to me. I don’t drag him. I don’t beg him.”

  “Don’t act so sophisticated. I suppose you didn’t call every ten minutes one night when he didn’t show up?”

  Cookie laughed, shrugging her shoulders. “I suppose I did. That was at first. A woman likes to be sure of her charms. I had given up a perfectly good date to go out with Carlos. It burned me crisp when he didn’t show. I was mad, honey. A lot madder than I was hurt.”

  “All right. If you have so many dates, leave my husband alone.” Bernice’s voice was cold.

  Cookie looked at her. “You mean that, don’t you?”

  “I never meant anything any more.”

  “I’m perfectly willing to leave him alone, honey. I don’t want to see you upset. Live and let live, that’s my motto. There are plenty more where he came from, although you’d probably want to argue that. Tell him to stay away from me. If he’ll stay, you have my word. I won’t even look at him again.”

  Bernice cried out, “Pretty sure of yourself, aren’t you?”

  “O.K., honey. If you won’t believe me when I tell you that I don’t particularly want your Carlos, yes. I’m sure of myself. I know that if I want him, I’ve only got to crook my finger. Yes. But for God’s sake, I’m being honest with you. I don’t want him. He’s pretty. That’s all he is. That gets kind of tiresome. It’s like a circus. When you’ve seen it once, you’ve seen it. If you can make him stay away from me, I’m perfectly pleased.”

  “Yes. That’s what you are saying. But what you mean is that I can’t keep him away from you. And as long as I can’t, you can afford to be generous.”

  Cookie sat up on the couch. Her voice was gentle. “You poor dope. You really do love him, don’t you? Look. Look, honey. What’s your name? Bernice? Look, Bernice, I’m sorry for you. I’m telling you the truth. It isn’t even your fault Carlos came running after me. He’s what he is. That’s all he is. You don’t even need to hate yourself. You couldn’t have kept him. He would have run after me, no matter what you were. That’s Carlos.”

  “I want him.” Bernice’s voice cracked. “You’ve got to let him alone. I beg you.”

  “Well, don’t. Don’t beg, Bernice. Begging never kept any man. Don’t you understand what I’m telling you? Take your Carlos. Take him away from here. Keep him. I don’t care! Do you understand that?”

  “I understand just this: You’re laughing at me. You’re having a swell laugh. Because you know Carlos will come back, and that you’ll go on seeing him.”

  Cookie stood up. “Why don’t you go back home, Bernice? This isn’t getting us anywhere.”

  Bernice stood up too. Her face was drained of color. Her flat eyes were distended beneath her glasses.

  “I’ll kill you, Cookie. If you don’t stay away from him, I’ll kill you.”

  Cookie shivered and gathered her negligee closer. “Now you’re being silly. I’ve been trying to tell you, Bernice. You can’t kill every woman Carlos chases after. He’s a pretty boy. He’s got to feel that his beauty is appreciated. It takes new women all the time for that, Bernice. If it wasn’t me, it would be some other woman. So what are you going to do?”

  Her eyes clouded with tears, Bernice drove the Cadillac seventy miles an hour along the twisting gulf highway. The first thing she saw clearly was the green community center and the neon sign, “Bar.”

  She slammed on her brakes, the tires squealing. She tooled the sleek car into the parking place directly before the door of the taproom.

  She got out and stalked across the walk. Dugan looked up when she slid onto a stool at the bar.

  “Hello, Bernice. Still going at it the slow way?”

  “Give me a whisky sour. And don’t talk so much.”

  Dugan looked at her, frowning. “What you mad with me for? I thought you liked for me to talk to you. I figured I knew you pretty well.”

  She gulped down the drink and shoved the glass back at him. “Yes. You know me. You’ve known me from the first time I came in here. And that’s what I can’t understand. Why should you know about me? How do you know what I feel and what I want?”

  He fixed her another drink. “It’s pretty dear, kid. You want something you’re never going to have. And you think you are. And you think you’re going to be happy when you get it.” He laughed, not looking at her. “Why, I bet you’d even kill if you thought it would mean getting what you wanted.”

  Bernice slid off the stool. She stood staring at Dugan. “Who are you? What do you know about me?”

  Dugan slid the glass of whisky across the gleaming bar. “Relax. I don’t know you. It’s just that I know anybody that comes here and sits at my bar. I been in this game a long time.”

  “Why did you tell me that you—you could get me—even poison if I wanted it?”

  He shook his head. “I was joking. I was only trying to make you see that you might as well relax and enjoy what you have. I was trying to be funny. I was telling you that you can either make the best of what you got or take the quick, easy way out.”

  Bernice laughed, shortly at first, then loudly. “I was afraid of you. And all the time it was only because you were telling me the same things I was telling myself.”

  “Sure. I just hit the nail on the head with you, that’s all.

  Here, have another drink. This one is on the house. Just because I looked at you and read you right.”

  Bernice took the whisky sour. She drank it slowly.

  She sat on the stool again and leaned across the bar. “You were joking. You were joking about what you could get for me, weren’t you?”

  “I said I was.”

  “But I’ll bet you could, if you wanted to. If you got enough money for it. Perhaps five hundred dollars.”

  He swiped at the bar. “Are you trying to get me in trouble, baby?”

  Her eyes bored int
o his. Her voice was cold. “I was only joking.”

  Their eyes held. “Sure. We’re both joking.”

  “But you could get it, couldn’t you?”

  He wiped at the bar a long time, putting a lot of muscle behind it. When he looked up, his face was taut. His eyes searched her face. He nodded.

  Seventeen

  Bernice prowled the empty cottage.

  She glared at the telephone a dozen times. Finally, hating herself, she sank to the chair beside it. She dialed Cookie Dawson’s number, sat empty-stomached listening to the wail of the bell across the lines.

  “Hello?” Cookie said.

  “This is Bernice.”

  Cookie’s voice became hostile. “Yes. What is it, Bernice?”

  “I thought you were going to leave him alone. I thought I warned you.”

  “Look, Bernice. He isn’t here. Get that straight. I won’t be hounded like this.”

  “This is only the beginning if you don’t leave him alone.”

  She heard Cookie’s indrawn breath. “I know what’s the matter with you. I couldn’t figure. Now I know. You’re crazy. You’re just plain crazy, aren’t you?”

  Bernice laughed. “Why wouldn’t I be?”

  “Listen to me, Bernice. I don’t know where you got my phone number. But I warn you. Forget it. If you don’t stop calling, Bernice, I’ll call the police. I mean that. I’m trying to be perfectly calm and perfectly fair with you. But you’re giving me a bad case of the creeps. I think you’re dangerous.”

  Bernice laughed again. “For three days you left him alone. Now you’ve started again. You don’t know how dangerous I can be.”

  “You’re wrong, Bernice. I do know. That’s why I’ll call the police if you don’t stop this.”

  “Why, you stinking little—”

  “Look, Bernice. This is the last time I’ll ever talk to you. I want you to know that I’m trying to be fair. There’s a man here with me. I don’t know why I’m doing this. But I want you to listen to me. I think you’ll know he isn’t your dearly beloved. Here, Joe.”

  A man’s slurring voice poured across the wire. “He’o, li’l ol’ Bernice, this here is Joe. Answer to maiden’s prayers. You had any maiden’s prayers lately, honey? I got answer to em.”

  Suddenly cold, Bernice replaced the receiver. Joe was still talking.

  She looked down at her clenched fists. Carlos wasn’t with Cookie. What had the little blonde said? If it wasn’t Cookie, it would be some other woman.

  She got up, trailed into the bedroom. It was one-thirty in the morning. Tiredly she snapped off the lights and fell across the bed. She lay there listening to the boom of the surf, the lonely sounds of cars on the highway, the empty sobbing voices inside her head.

  She pushed herself up from the bed and went into the bathroom. She got down the small box of sleeping pills. “Go to a doc,” Dugan had told her. “Get some sleeping pills. When you’re by yourself, take the pills. Sleep. Pretty soon they won’t work any more. But at first they’ll work. That’s all you care about, ain’t it? Right now is the time that matters.”

  She took three pills, snapped out the light, and returned to her bed.

  She toppled across the bed. She lay there, her eyes dry and wide. Silently she prayed for sleep. Maybe with the pills it would be a dreamless sleep. That’s what she had to have. She couldn’t go on like this, needing sleep, afraid to sleep alone.

  The silence stretched taut across the island. She closed her eyes, she pressed the pillow over her face, but she couldn’t sleep. Her life moved in slow, hateful scenes like a movie in her mind. The years at Brennan’s. The way she’d been plain, unattractive Bernice Harper. All her life. She’d wished herself dead a hundred times to escape her lonely existence. She’d seethed, weeping inside, seeing lovely girls promoted over her, watching helplessly as pretty dumb little things walked away with every man she ever wanted. Plain, colorless Bernice. She remembered the first time she had seen Lloyd. The way the office had whispered that Bernice had been assigned to work with him because he couldn’t see her, didn’t have to look at her.

  She knew now how much he’d loved her. But she still hated him for it. His loving her clearly demonstrated how unwanted she was in the world she longed for. Life with him had been a mockery. Plenty of people were unattractive in one way or another, and plenty were unwanted. But no one ever craved attention and adulation from the people around her as Bernice did. She was starved for it.

  How sure she’d been that Lloyd’s hidden thousands would buy her what she wanted. Beauty, charm, background—the adulation and attention she desired above everything else in the world.

  She lay there, breathless. She could still see the way they had walked along the corridor together. She had run at him, her arms stiff and straight. She could see him falling, slowly toppling away from her, the floor grumbling under her feet as he rolled and twisted to his death without a word of protest.

  She was breathing through her opened mouth.

  Now in her mind she watched them as they entered Lloyd’s old house. Detective, partner, lawyer, doctor, family. The way they believed her when she told her story. They all thought her so plain she would have been joyous at the prospect of being either wife or mistress to Lloyd Deerman. Maybe if she had been lovely, Fred Findlay would have been harder to convince.

  She twisted on the bed.

  They all knew Lloyd had loved her. There was no mention of her in his will. And she was no insurance beneficiary. She watched their faces as she told her lies. She saw them all believe.

  She sat up on the bed, her shoulders slumped round. She had got away with murder. She had that money. But every night she saw Lloyd falling, lying at the foot of the steep stairwell, neck twisted back, sightless eyes fixed on her.

  Sure, she had dresses that flattered her figure, and glasses that rendered her blind and gave her headaches. Her hair was trimmed to a halo about her face. Men turned to look at her. She knew she was pretty. She was something turned out by Gloria Soonin’s beauty factory. But it ended there.

  She had nothing she wanted. She was still starved, still wanting, still lonely. How did they treat lovely women? She still didn’t know.

  She got up off the bed, trailed across the room. In the gray filmy darkness she could see her reflection in the full-length mirror. The smooth and lovely product of Soonin’s Beauty Salon. That’s what she saw. A beautiful and synthetic loveliness. But it may as well have been the bitter and unhappy Bernice that stared back at her, the old stringy-haired Bernice. For all Carlos cared, she was the same unwanted Bernice.

  She twisted, refusing to look in the mirror any more.

  And there, three feet from her, lay Lloyd Deerman! His leg was twisted under him, his head was lolling back on his shoulder. She clapped her hand over her mouth to seal back the scream twisting up through her tightened throat.

  She wanted to run but her legs were stiff with paralysis. She could only stand there, feeling herself going completely to pieces inside. Her lips trembled, and she could feel the muscles in her face go taut, pulling down the lower lids of her eyes.

  Breath sobbed across her mouth, and she knew she was completely helpless, paralyzed with fright.

  She heard the cottage door stealthily opening. Numbed, she stood waiting in the middle of the room. She watched Carlos tiptoe to the bedroom door.

  The breath sighed out of her. Her heart began to pump again, and she was able to drag her legs, and she started toward him.

  He gasped, startled at the sight of her moving with catalyptic slowness across the gloom toward him. His head jerked back and he leaped for the side of the door, fighting at the wall switch. Light flooded the room.

  Bernice, starkly pale, stood staring at Carlos.

  There was terror in his face. Fear had made his eyes wild and round. For a moment they stared at each other.

  Slowly Bernice turned and stared at the place where in the darkness she had seen Lloyd’s body. She almost laughed
aloud. It was her own coat. She’d been angry with Carlos when she’d come in from dinner tonight. She’d carelessly hung up the fur, and it had fallen to the floor.

  She wheeled back around, facing Carlos. “Where have you been?” she said.

  He looked at her, composure regained. He flattened his tight blond curls with the heel of his hand. “What difference does it make?” he inquired.

  “I married you to be near you,” she said emptily. “But I never see you at all. You’ve got to love me, Carlos. I can’t stand it if you don’t. I swear it—I’ll kill myself.”

  He laughed at her. “Poor little Bernice. Never had anything. No boy friends. No lovers. No wonder. My God, everything is the end of the world with you. I’m afraid to walk in here. You looked like a damned witch standing there in the dark. I thought, so help me God, you were going to stick a knife in me. You wouldn’t want to spill my pretty blue blood all over the Rockledge rugs, would you? Inferior grade rugs, baby.”

  “Stop laughing,” she whispered. “You can’t go on treating me like this. I won’t let you. I won’t. I’ll die before I’ll let you! I’ll kill myself!”

  He just looked at her, his mouth twisted. “You haven’t got the guts,” he told her evenly. He pushed past her, trailing the elusive scent of some woman’s perfume.

  Eighteen

  It was no good. Dozens of nights. Dozens of whisky sours across the bar at Dugan’s. Waking in the morning and wondering how she got home at all. Who brought her there? Who put her there? Had the man at the bar beside her really had a face at all? Or was that only Lloyd Deerman having a drink with her? Was that Lloyd Deerman helping her across the highway and pouring her into her lonely bed? Oh, no. That was a dream. The kind of dream you had when you slept.

  The nightmares you had now when you were awake. Nothing could stop them. Nothing could still the wailing voices, the intense whispers pleading inside you to die and get it over. You’ve made a bad bargain and there’s only one way out. That’s what the voices said. You couldn’t escape them. Drink had been an escape. But not any more. There wasn’t liquor enough in Dugan’s bar to drown the insistent whispering of those bottomless voices.