by Tedd Thomey
Somewhere on the lower floor a clock struck one. He tipped the bottle up to his lips once more and discovered it was empty. Immediately he felt cold and lost—until he remembered the buffet in the dining room where an additional supply was kept.
He made the trip down the dark stairs and back again without difficulty. And as he drank from the new bottle — an entire quart—he felt the desire growing strongly again. He had to have Alma—he absolutely had to have her. Nothing else was important. She did things to him that no other woman could ever do and sometimes, even when he was tired, she made him more proud of himself than he had ever been before in his life.
He began to feel very good, very strong.
Rising from the chair he paced before the window, looking down at the dark wet street, wishing they would return now, this very minute when he felt so strong—strong enough to do whatever Alma demanded.
CHAPTER 9
Even at one o’clock the party was still loud and boisterous, and everybody, including Norman, was having a big time. The Dockstaders lived in a large Early American house and they’d rolled back the rugs in two rooms for dancing. In the dining room there was dancing to the Victrola, to such new hit songs as Valencia and Fifty Million Frenchmen Can’t Be Wrong. In the living room a new radio, the first one Alma had ever seen with a built-in speaker, supplied an unlimited number of fox trots and an occasional turkey trot and waltz. The Dockstaders weren’t stingy with their gin, rum, and beer and they set up a buffet counter in the dining room where the guests helped themselves to a post-midnight lunch of knockwurst and potato salad.
Alma danced once with Norman and found it easy to smile at him the rest of the evening and to carry on the pretense that things were wonderful between them. Several times, she let him finish her drink when the other men invited her to dance. She kept a careful tabulation and when she saw Norman down his seventh highball, she knew everything was going to work out perfectly. Norman never got drunk, but he did grow exceptionally mellow and sleepv after half a dozen drinks. There would be no need to run the risk of giving him a sleeping powder after they got home, something which might not work anywav.
As for herself, she did not need liquor to add to her excitement. She spaced her drinks over the evening, finishing only two and sipping a little of the others. She danced at least once with every mile present and enjoyed several extra turns around the floor with a good-looking young man who reminded her a lot of Rill Riddle, the first fellow she’d ever enjcyed making love with. By one-thirty, as the first couples were beginning to depart, her excitement was strong and vibrant.
“How about once more around?” asked the good-looking young man while the radio was playing, In A Little Spanish Town.
“Anything you say, hon,” she replied.
And even though Norman might be watching, she leaned her head against the voung man’s shoulder and let him hold her tightlv. It was so nice to be popular and in demand. And before long she would be able to do this as often as she liked, dance with as many voung men as she wanted and spend all the monev she wanted without worrying about explaining it to Norman.
She decided they should leave about quarter to two, neither too early nor too late. Enough couples remained to appreciate with chuckles and comments the pleasant domestic scene the Chryslers presented as they departed. Eileen, who had been put to bed with the Dockstader children, continued to sleep while Norman carried her over his shoulder past the couples who were still dancing. Alma held his other arm like a dutiful, devoted spouse and put her fur wrap over Eileen’s legs as they went down the front steps into the rain.
During the drive home her excitement mounted so high it was extremely difficult to remain seated calmly on the cushion. She had not been so excited since that night when she was twenty-three and had her first party with Bill Riddle. She’d felt this same delicious wickedness that night and it had been raining, too, just as heavily, when she slipped out of the apartment after supper. That was when she and Norman were living on West Chestnut Street about four years after their marriage. It was the first time she’d ever made love to any one other than Norman, and it had been a great awakening. Until then she had never even suspected that making love could be so much fun. Norman, grooved in his dull routines, had been working nights at the magazine office, and not once, even then, did he inquire about how she spent some of her nights. It had been very easy to slip up the back steps to the apartment of Bill Riddle, whose folks were away every night running their delicatessen. Bill was only nineteen, very good-looking and very mature for his years. He had taught her to do things Norman could never have appreciated, even if she had given him the chance.
“Nice party, wasn’t it,” said Norman, filling the car with smoke from the Cuban cigar Mr. Dockstader had given him. He was so relaxed that for once he wasn’t picking a fight with her on their way home, the way he usually did.
“Very nice,” she said, but she didn’t mean the party they’d just left. She was remembering those parties with Bill Riddle and the thrills she had, until the night she’d found the back door to his folks’ apartment locked. She bit her lip, remembering how terrible she had felt when she found out later that he had another girl in there, Linda Haagenseri, who was seventeen.
“You’re too old for me, Alma,” he’d told her the next day, laughing at her. “Gee whiz, you’re almost five years older than me.”
It had been one of the most “upsetting, most insulting experiences of her life, but she’d fixed him. She’d written an anonymous letter to his folks, mailing it to the delicatessen, telling them what was going on every night at their apartment. That fixed good-looking, young Bill Riddle right then and there. His folks had banished him to the farm of his grandparents in Maryland. How he must have hated it, soiling his tender hands as he shoveled manure, dipped sheep and labored like a slave in the sweet potato fields.
“What time is it?” Norman asked, as they turned onto their own street.
She looked at her watch. “Two. Exactly.”
“Pretty damn late.” Yawning, he failecl, as usual, to put his hand over his mouth. “Got to get up early. Going fishing.”
She almost felt like giggling at him. Oh, no, you’re not, she thought, and the sensation of wickedness rose deliciouslv in the pit of her stomach.
She stared ahead through the windshield, looking up at the bedroom window of their house as they approached, although she knew it was much too dark and rainy to see Bud. But he was there, of that she was certain.
He had to be there.
CHAPTER 10
Up in the bedroom, Ward stopped pacing as soon as the headlights turned in from the street and came along the driveway.
Without warning, terror leaped up within him and his desire to be strong and resolute melted quickly away. He began to shake. What are you doing in this house? a voice demanded, and his fear did not lessen when he realized it was his own voice. He leaped back from the window and fled toward the stairs. Halfway down, he remembered it was pouring rain and he couldn’t go out minus his overcoat and hat. He ran back toward the bedroom, tripping in his frenzy on the top step, almost dropping the bottle. In the darkness of the closet he couldn’t find his hat. Leaving without it, he threw his coat over his arm and started down the steps a second time.
Too late. Already there were footsteps at the side door and the sound of a key turning in the lock.
Back up the steps he fled, unable to breathe, choking on the air locked in his lungs. He ran to the bedroom and crouched on the floor in the darkest shadow behind the bed.
He heard a switch click and saw dim, reflected light in the hall. He heard heavy footsteps on the stairs, and decided they were Norman’s. He heard Alma’s footsteps, light and brisk, and then the sound of a child’s voice, Eileen’s, protesting as she was put to bed.
A toilet flushed and, in another minute, he heard the sound of heavy shoes, Norman’s shoes, being dropped on the floor in the adjacent bedroom. He heard bedsprings and a mattress cr
eak under someone’s weight, undoubtedly Norman’s, and then the house became silent again.
He waited to flee into the rain and darkness outside, but he could not move. He cowered beside the bed, breathing fitfully, his whole body trembling.
He heard Alma steal into the bedroom.
“Bud?” she said softly. “Are you here?”
He could not trust himself to whisper a reply. He gestured to her. Then he rose and went to her, putting his arms around her, feeling the intense warmth of her through the silken negligee. Alma shivered against him and he sensed her excitement and nervousness.
“Oh, Mommy,” he said. “I’ve been-”
She placed her palm over his mouth. “Be quiet. He’s finishing his cigar. We’ll have to wait.”
He watched her vanish into the dimness of the hall. Returning to the shadows beside the bed, he sat on the floor and drank from the bottle. He felt miserable.
Before long she came back with the whispered information that Eileen was sound asleep and Norman had put out his cigar.
“We’ll still have to wait,” she said. “We’ll wait until he turns over and is sleeping on his good ear.” She paused. “Now come here, you little devil.”
Helping him to his feet, she kissed him hotly on the mouth. Then she rubbed her cheek against his and he could smell her perfume, its gardenia fragrance heightened by the warmth of her skin.
“Did you find the things?” she whispered. “Under the pillows?”
“Yes.”
“The sash weicht?”
“Yes.”
“Did you bring the wire and the chloroform?”
“Yes.”
“You’ve been drinking, haven’t you?”
“Yes, I have, God damn it.” His voice rose in intensity. “And if you think I’m—”
“Quiet, Bud!” Her hand, warmer than before, covered his mouth. “You are going through with it, aren’t you?”
He did not reply.
“Well, aren’t you?”
“Maybe.”
“I’ll say you are!” Her lips came closer to his ear. “You know what will happen if you don’t! You’ll never see me again at the hotel! You’ll never see me again—ever!”
“I know, I know!” he said, miserably.
“And you want to, don’t you?” He felt her hands moving at the front of her negligee, but he didn’t realize she had unfastened it until she placed his hand upon her breast, pressing it hard into the uncovered flesh. “Don’t you?”
Almost immediately he was reminded of Peony and that day long ago when she had pressed his hand against her breast in almost the same way. And he remembered his failure.
“Yes!” he said. “Yes, God damn it! Let’s do it now! Let’s have a party now!”
“No, you devil!” she giggled softly. “Later. After it’s over, we’ll get good and plastered and we’ll have the best party ever! Now wait while I take another look at the Governor.”
In less than a minute she returned.
“He’s asleep.” Her whisper was jubilant. “Sound asleep on his good ear. He won’t hear a thing.”
“What time is it?”
“Quarter to three.”
“He can’t be sound asleep yet. There hasn’t been time enough.”
“But he is Bud. He is!”
“I don’t care. I don’t want to rush it. We’ll wait fifteen more minutes.” He raised the quart bottle and in the dim light from the hall saw that it was only a fourth full. “Do you want a drink?”
“No.”
Sitting on the bed, he took a long pull and experienced a good reaction, felt his throat grow hot, felt the good heat of it in his belly.
“All right,” she said reluctantly. “In fifteen minutes.”
She sat sideways on the chair near the doorway, elbows resting on the wooden back, legs crossed, and in the dimness of the room she looked exactly like a silent figure on a photo negative.
He took another drink and it seemed to loosen his memory. He began to remember his failure, all his failures, those at school when he couldn’t make the baseball team or even the track team because he was too small. He remembered the jibes and the insults of the bigger boys as they flaunted their muscles on the field. He felt his face flush as he remembered Peony again and was certain, as he’d always been, that she’d told the bigger boys about his failure up on the grassy slope behind the school. He could still hear her laughter—that damned girlish, ridiculous laughter. And there were those other failures, the lost jobs, the lost sales accounts. And there had been more laughter, men laughing behind his back when they turned down a sale, men making bad jokes about his size, implying that his virility was of similar proportions.
Rising to his feet, he took another drink and then he gazed across the room at Alma.
“It’s time,” she whispered. “Are you ready?”
He knew the fifteen minutes hadn’t passed, but suddenly he didn’t care.
He nodded.
She came to his side. She was breathing quickly, through her mouth, the way she did sometimes when they made love. In her eyes the light from the hall was reflected with a strange brilliance, a deep glow that was animal-like in intensity. It reminded him of a leopard he’d once seen in a zoo.
“Here,” she commanded, “put these on.”
She handed him the cotton gloves that had been on the bed. Her fingers, as they touched his, were extremely warm.
He put the gloves on.
“Have you got it?” she whispered.
“Got what?”
“The sash weight, you fool!”
He picked it up and was astonished at how heavy it was.
“Yes.”
“All right. I’ll bring the other things.”
He watched her put a stick of gum into her mouth and begin to chew it nervously. Then she removed the cap from the chloroform and picked up the other objects—the cotton waste, the coil of wire and a pair of pliers which he hadn’t realized were on the bed.
“All right.” He heard her draw in her breath sharply. “Now!”
He held the sash weight with both hands and felt her hand grasp his elbow, guiding him into the hallway. He did not feel excited. He did not feel anything, other than the fact that he was a little drunker than usual, and that his legs were relaxed and loose.
The door to the master bedroom was closed but not latched.
Alma pushed with her elbow and it opened on hinges which functioned silently.
Grasping his arm again, she guided him inside and he saw that it was a large bedroom, better lighted than the other one because the light from the hall shone in more directly. His eyes made out the high bed, its scroll work footboard and a shadowy mound beneath the blankets.
Ward’s heart gave a great lurch as he realized what the mound was. It was the first time he had ever seen Norman and he was astonished at how large a man he was, how thick he was through the shoulders.
He felt Alma pushing him toward the bed, guiding him toward the headboard. Because of a flap of dark blanket, he could not make out Norman’s features, but it was apparent that Norman was lying sideways, his head only partly on the pillow.
“Now!” whispered Alma and there was a tremendous urgency in her voice.
As he raised the sash weight, grasping it tightly with both hands, the blood thrashed at his temples, making his ears ring with pressure, forcing him to open his mouth and draw in air. But the weight felt good in his hands, its very heaviness giving him strength, and he raised it higher and stepped closer to the bed.
And now he saw how really big Norman was and he was glad Norman was big, especially because he was as big as the biggest athletes at school had been, as powerful as the most powerful of his tormentors had been.
But he was not afraid now.
He was not afraid of Norman or any of the others.
He raised the sash weight high in the air.
He brought the weight crashing down toward the sleeping head and it was so hea
vy it started to slip from his fingers.
It struck the side of Norman’s head.
It struck bone and then glanced off.
A roar came from the bedclothes, the bellow of a man in terrible pain.
With horror Ward realized that the blow had almost missed! At best, it had merely stunned Norman.
Norman’s head twisted wildly from side to side, and Alma screamed.
“Hit him! Hit him again!”
Ward tried to retrieve the sash weight, but his fingers became frantically tangled in the blanket and he could not find it.
Norman looked about him with crazed eyes, trying to sit up. And Ward knew that Norman mustn’t be allowed to sit up, because if he did it would mean failure, complete failure added to all those other failures.
Ward threw himself on the bed. He straddled Norman’s twisting body and somehow his fingers found the thick, muscular throat. With all his strength he squeezed, but it was not enough, not nearly enough, and he felt Norman’s hands striking him, smashing at him, trying to dislodge him. And then he felt something drawing tight about his own throat, crushing his own windpipe. Paralyzed with terror, he suddenly realized that Norman had seized his necktie and was strangling him with it.
“Mommy, Mommy!” he cried. “For God’s sakes, Mommy, help me!”
He saw Alma pick up the sash weight. He felt the necktie being drawn tighter around his throat, felt the big, rough hands drawing his face closer to Norman’s. From the edge of his eye, he saw Alma raise the weight and smash it across her husband’s forehead.
Norman’s head was driven deep into the pillow, but the blow was not enough. Shaking, the eyes almost swelling from their sockets, the head rose powerfully once more from the pillow and the big hands pulled harder on Ward’s necktie.