Stranger At Home

by George Sanders

  There was somebody down there. The pale blue of the beach sand had splashes of gold on it under the cabana windows.

  Vickers turned and went on to the house. In the doorway he stopped and leaned his shoulder against the jamb and stood watching.

  There were two radios going full blast. One had a rhumba band. On the other, a woman with a bass voice was dying of a broken heart. No one was listening to either of them.

  The living room was not particularly large, and it seemed to have several thousand people in it. The mass squirmed and shifted with a sort of yeasty unease, fraying at the edges into individual blobs. A man had gone to sleep under the big table, his feet tucked in carefully, his head pillowed on a cushion from the window seat, a handkerchief over his face. Over in the corner a woman had broken the thin rhinestone strap that held her dress up. Four men were helping her. From the way she was yelling they were making progress in some direction. On the broad window seat there was a couple that had forgotten about the party altogether. Everybody was shrieking with laughter. Some of them were just shrieking.

  Nobody noticed Vickers.

  A few of the people he knew. Some of them he remembered vaguely. Most of them he had never seen. There was no sign of Angie.

  He moved forward into the room.

  He was taller than anyone there, and he was sober, and he went through the mob like an ice breaker. Nobody even cursed him. He reached the big alcove at the end where the bar was. A man was bent double over the little bar, pawing at something on the floor behind it.

  “Charlie,” he said. “Charlie.” He began to cry.

  Vickers saw a man’s arm sticking out across the floor. He went over and had a look. Somebody had been playing bartender and had gone to sleep on the job.

  “Poor Charlie,” said the man who was crying. “He’s dead. And I want another drink.”

  “Not only dead,” said Vickers, “but stiff.” He dragged the snoring carcass out and flung it unconcernedly into a corner. “What’ll you have?”

  “Double water and no scotch.”

  “Sure that’s what you want?”

  “S’what I been drinking all evening, and I never mix ’em.”

  “Right.” Vickers poured a double shot of White Rock into a glass. He said casually, “Seen Angie around?”

  “Angie?”

  Vickers handed him the glass. “Angie Vickers. She’s giving this party.”

  Light broke. “Oh, Angie!” He raised his glass, screwed up an enormous wink, nodded, and took the White Rock in one swallow, after which he exhaled loudly and made the usual I-hate-the-filthy-stuff grimace. Then he leaned forward confidentially.

  “I haven’t seen Angie for a long, long time. Nobody ever sees Angie for a long, long time. But I’ll tell you a secret. You look for Harry Bryce, or Job Crandall, or Bill Saul.” He laughed suddenly, which nearly caused him to fall on his face. “Or maybe all of ’em at once, I dunno. Anyway, Angie’ll be there.”

  Will she?” said Michael Vickers. His voice was almost unconcerned. “Will she really?”

  The man was staring at him. “You’re twins,” he said accusingly. A woman came up and took the man’s arm. “You’re drunk, Roddy,” she said. “Look, people, Roddy’s drunk.” She thought that was very funny. Roddy glared, then frowned and sniffed the glass with the remains of the White Rock in it.

  “Drunk, huh? Well, no wonder, the dirty sonofabitch – he mixed drinks on me! I was stony cold sober... where is the dirty...”

  Vickers had gone.

  He was back in the south wing now, where the bedrooms were strung along one side of a long passage. The other side was glass, and beyond it the garden was dark and silent under the mist. He passed the first guest room. It seemed to be sacred to the ladies for this night. A burst of female cackling came through the half open door. The next one was ditto for the men. The third door was closed. Vickers went past it, to the door of the big room on the corner that had been his and Angie’s. He flung it open.

  The room was empty. The little portrait of Angie he had always liked so much smiled down at him from the wall. Her eyes had sunbeams in them, those odd clear eyes that were almost golden, and her lips were parted, and there was wind in her black hair. Vickers closed the door very quietly. He went to the third guest room.

  It contained a pair of frail young men who screamed at him. He looked at them and went away, back along the hall. His face was quite empty of expression. He went into the kitchen. Job Crandall was there. He was hunched over: the white enamel table, drinking beer out of a quart bottle, and he was so near passing out that he was staring like a blind man. He was nearly as tall as Vickers, loose-jointed and gracefully angular. His hair was snow-white, his face dark brown and handsome, his eyes deep blue. His red-headed wife sat on the edge of the table. She was beautifully gowned and coifed, but youth was not in her. Nothing was in her at this moment but fury and alcohol. She was cursing Job Crandall slowly and repetitiously in a low, hissing voice. Crandall drank beer and stared straight ahead of him.

  Vickers said quietly, “Shut up, Harriet.” He leaned across the table. “Job. Job, remember me?”

  Crandall blinked. His eyes were drugged and empty.

  Harriet went on cursing.

  Vickers leaned on the table for a moment, watching them. Then he went away. Just outside the door a crashing noise made him look around. Job Crandall had fallen forward across the table and the beer bottle had dropped to the floor. It didn’t break. There was still some beer in it. Harriet picked it up and raised it to her thin, smeared mouth.

  Vickers went back through the living room. There was still no sign of Angie there. Faces passed him. Strange faces, faces that he knew, all of them blurred and feverish with the immediacy of pleasure, unseeing. He looked into the garden. It was empty. He went out of the front door and along the terrace to the glassed-in sun deck. He found Bill Saul there, with a woman.

  She was a bleached blonde with large breasts and a sultry, attractive face. She was standing in the corner, against the wall, and Bill Saul was standing against her, his hands placed one on either side of her head. He was a lean man with dark hair, and he wore a white jacket. His face was hidden against the woman’s cheek. He moved it, slowly, down toward her throat, and she thrust her chin up and caught her breath aloud, and smiled.

  Vickers went up and put his hand on Saul’s shoulder. “Bill,” he said. “Turn around.”

  Saul lifted a pale, predacious face to the moon and said three words and bent his head again.

  Vickers tightened his hand and pulled. Saul was not little, and he was not weak, but he moved.

  “I told you to turn around.”

  Saul’s face showed hollows at the temples and in the long cheeks. His hair grew to a peak on his beautiful forehead, and his eyes were as old and as colorless as the moon, and he looked like Lucifer, drunk and in rut. He said softly, “What the hell are you trying to do?” and struck.

  Vickers stopped the blow before it was started. His left hand was holding Saul’s soft shirt below the collar. He thrust Saul back until his head rapped sharply against an upright between the panes of glass.

  “By Jesus,” Vickers said, “somebody’s going to say hello to me.” He slapped Saul lightly across the face. “Say hello, Bill. Welcome me home.”

  The moonlight fell between them. He saw Saul’s eyes widening and he saw the woman rigid as a statue in the corner, and after a long, long time he heard Saul’s voice say, “Michael Vickers.”

  He let go of Saul and stepped back. He said politely, “Thank you, Bill. And now, perhaps you know where Angie is.”

  Bill Saul said nothing. He did not move. He stared at Vickers and his narrow head moved once from right to left and back again. Vickers waited, not long. He turned to the woman. She had sunk into a chair. She was quite drunk and would soon be hysterical. Vickers looked through the glass, down toward the quiet sea. The lights were still on in the boathouse.

  “I’ll see you later, Bill,
” he said, and went back to the steps. It was a long way down.

  Bill Saul stood motionless. A thin film of sweat crawled over his face. The woman began to sob, but he paid no attention. He did not stir until, suddenly, the cabin cruiser woke noisily and swept out of the cove. Saul spun around and stared after it. The dinghy was bobbing now beside the mooring buoy.

  Saul went to the steps and began to run down them. He found Vickers standing in the open doorway of the cabana. He was lighting a cigarette. His hands were steady and he was smiling.

  “Hello, Bill.”

  Saul’s tongue seemed to be oddly stiff, as though he were not used to using it. “Find Angie?”

  “In a way.” Vickers pointed out to sea. “She’s just taken the cruiser out.”

  “Alone?”

  “She was alone in the dinghy. I saw her go aboard.”

  Saul said awkwardly, “She often takes the cruiser out.”

  Vickers nodded. “She always did.”

  Saul moved past him, into the room. He took a cigarette from a box on the table and lighted it. His hands were not steady. A glint of metal against the rough canvas cushions of the window seat caught his eye. He went over and picked up a cigarette case. It was Mexican silver, with a thunderbird on it.

  Vickers said, “That looks like the one I gave Harold Bryce for Christmas five years ago.”

  Saul said, “It is.” He looked around the empty room, then out the window toward the house, frowning. “Wonder where Harry’s got to?”

  Vickers stood quietly in the doorway, smoking, looking out to sea. “I don’t know,” he said. “Except that he’s gone from here.”

  Chapter Three

  Vickers had not gone to bed at all. Quiet and detached, he had played host until nearly daybreak, and then had watched the party pour itself away. No one had questioned him. No one had said his name. He was not surprised. Most of them could not have said their own names.

  He stood alone on the terrace for a long time. The sun came up and touched the morning mist to opalescent warmth and then burned it slowly away. Down in the cove the dinghy looked small and lonesome beside the mooring buoy. It was very quiet. The cruiser had not come back.

  There were only three cars left on the flat space below. One would belong to Angie, one to the Crandalls, and one to Bill Saul. Bryce’s car was where Vickers had left it, down the drive.

  Vickers flung away his cigarette and went inside. The house was buried under used and empty glassware. In the kitchen he cleared away enough of the litter to make coffee. By the time it was ready the smell of it had begun to bring people out of their holes.

  Bill Saul came first. His eyes were bloodshot and there were dark smudges under them, but otherwise he showed no signs of a hangover.

  He said, “Hello, Vick,” and nodded toward the huge Silex. “I can use about four gallons of that.”

  “Help yourself.” Vickers took his own cup and sat down. He started violently as Saul clashed his saucer on the stove. Saul smiled. “Hasn’t Angie come back yet?”

  “No.”

  Saul walked over and sat down, not quite opposite Vickers at the kitchen table. He studied him obliquely. He had strange eyes. They seemed to suck every detail into themselves and drown it in some dark and quiet well, from which it could be resurrected at need. Like the corpses in the laboratory vats, Vickers thought.

  Saul said, “Well, are you going to talk?”

  “When I get ready.”

  Saul nodded. “I’ll save my questions, then.” He leaned back and suddenly he was laughing. ‘I’m glad you’re back.”

  Vickers raised an eyebrow. “You sound as though you meant that.”

  “I do. This is going to be fun.”

  “You always did have a weird sense of humor.”

  “At least I have one, which is more than you can say. Unless...” He studied Vickers shrewdly.

  “Unless what?”

  “Unless you’ve acquired one in your travels, along with that scar. You know, you really ought to change your name.”

  “Why?”

  “Well, a name is a label. You associate it with a particular thing. Take your big hound, Coolin. Suppose he vanishes for four years and comes back with horns, a ridge of bony spikes down his backbone, a fine soprano voice and a passion for artichoke hearts. He’s something, all right, but he isn’t Coolin.”

  Vickers smiled. “Study your semantics, Bill. Coolin One is not Coolin Two. Coolin the puppy is not Coolin the hound. And yet it’s all the same dog.”

  Bill Saul drank coffee, his eyes pale and intent and faintly malicious over the rim of the cup. “Which are you, then? Vickers One or Vickers Two?”

  “Believe me,” said Vickers, “I’ve lost count.” His smile went no farther than his lips. “Which do you think you’d prefer, Bill? You weren’t overly fond of Vickers One, as I recall it.”

  “I don’t like people very much,” Saul said. “Even people I like.” He glanced at the door, then rose. “Good morning, you sweet bitch,” he said pleasantly to Harriet Crandall. “Guess who this is? Or did you know?”

  Harriet Crandall stood quite still, watching Vickers’ body unfold lazily. Her eyes slid upward to his face and stayed there. In the clear morning light she looked pinched and waspish and old, and her red hair had no life to it. Her body was incongruously young and curved under the dove-gray housecoat she wore.

  She put both hands over her face. “Bill,” she said steadily. “I had a lot to drink last night. I may still be drunk. I seem to be looking at a man who looks like Michael Vickers. Not exactly like Michael Vickers. Just enough to make me uncomfortable.”

  Vickers said pleasantly, “You go right on being uncomfortable, old girl, because I am Vickers. Have some coffee?”

  “Coffee,” said Harriet. “My God.” She sat down. “I need something stronger than that.” She was suddenly angry. “Well, if that isn’t just like you, Vick! To turn up here without a word of warning and frighten the living...”

  “Vick!”

  The voice came from Job Crandall. It was like a grunt produced by being kicked fairly hard in the stomach. And Crandall’s face had that kind of a look on it. He reached out blindly for the door jamb.

  Vickers walked over to him. “Hello, Job. I spoke to you last night, but you were a little confused. Coffee’s just ready. Come on in.”

  Crandall didn’t move. His eyes didn’t waver from Vickers’ face. He began to tremble, particularly along the right side and arm. His jaw lifted, and his head drew around toward his right shoulder. His face was quite calm, bronzed and handsome, almost boyish.

  Harriet said between her teeth, “Oh, for heaven’s sake, stop him!”

  Vickers said to Saul, “Get some ice.” Saul went off quickly. Vickers put his hand on Job’s shoulder, and shook him gently. “Job. Here, now.” Saul came back with ice cubes wrapped in a dishtowel. Vickers took the cold bundle and held it firmly against the back of Crandall’s neck. Crandall caught a long shuddering breath and went rigid. Vickers led him to the breakfast nook and sat him down on the padded bench. He began to rub the ice over Crandall’s face and neck. Presently Crandall took the ice away from him, pressed it to his own forehead, and leaned forward over the table. His voice was uncertain, embarrassed, desperately unconcerned.

  “Hello, Vick,” he said. “How are you? When did you get back?”

  Harriet flounced over to the stove. “He got back last night, he says. Just walked in. Just like that. Not a word to anybody.” She splashed coffee into a cup and turned around. “If that isn’t just like him! Selfish son of a bitch... missing four years, nobody knows whether he’s alive or dead, and then he just turns up. I suppose that warning people beforehand would have spoiled his dramatic entrance.” She advanced toward Vickers. “And what I want to know is, what in hell happened to you? By God, if I were Angie, I’d cut your throat!”

  Vickers said softly, ‘I’m just wondering if anybody made this much of a fuss when I went away.”


  A woman’s voice said yawningly, “Who went away? You talking about my husband?”

  A tall brunette came sleepily into the kitchen. She was strictly the showgirl type, long legs and a sharp, up­thrusting bosom, all of which were displayed in a turquoise jersey sun-suit of the smallest possible dimensions. The bleached blonde who had been with Bill Saul on the sun deck was right behind her. She went over and draped herself quietly around Bill. The brunette looked around the kitchen, glanced incuriously at Vickers, and demanded,

  “Where is that no-good louse, anyhow?”

  Bill Saul said, “Mrs. Bryce, allow me to present Mr. Michael Vickers. Mr. Vickers, this is Jennie, who is not, I fear, as bright as a penny – the fourth Mrs. Harold Bryce. And by the way, where is Harold?”

  The brunette Mrs. Bryce smiled at Vickers, measured him up and down, added coquetry to her expression, and tossed her breasts ever so slightly. “Pleased to meet you.”

  Vickers bowed.

  ‘I’m getting sliced from Harold,” she said. “The bum.” She walked to the stove, her hips swinging. The blonde had gone to sleep on Saul’s shoulder. Job Crandall reached out suddenly and caught Vickers’ hand.

  “Vick,” he said. “What happened to you? What did happen?”

  Vickers looked down. His face was bland and innocent.

  “You were with me, Job. You and Bill Saul and Harry Bryce. You should know what happened.”

  The kitchen was quiet. Very, very quiet. And then, creeping small into the stillness, came the distant hum of a motor. Vickers straightened and turned away from Crandall and went out, to the living room, to the front door that stood open to the sun.

  He watched it come, a little roaring speck that grew across the blue water and made a clean white arc into the cove. It slowed and came daintily to rest by the mooring buoy, and the motor choked, bubbled, and died. The sharp wailing cry of a gull sounded loud in the sudden silence. Vickers stood motionless, watched the lithe figure in striped jersey and dungarees make fast and then climb into the dinghy and start to row ashore. A vein began to beat in his temple.