The Polka Dot Nude

by Joan Smith

  “Jerome called,” she said, as a crumb. Jerome Hespeler, literally the boy next door. A dear, sweet man, with less sex appeal in his entire body than Brad had in his little finger. He must have noticed my green complexion at the wedding. I’d give Jerome a call when I got back to New York. Safe, sexless men were beginning to seem a good idea.

  CHAPTER 6

  June 21, the first day of summer, and the longest day of the year. Why did I have to make it even longer by waking up at seven o’clock sharp? It was the crows yammering in the pine trees that caused it. Crickets chirping all night and crows all day—how was a person supposed to get any sleep? There was no background noise to mitigate the animal sounds either, no comfortable roar of traffic, no calming wail of a police or ambulance siren. I was definitely unbalanced to have come to this godforsaken spot. Still groggy, I padded into the kitchen to make coffee and let it perk while I showered and sorted out my day. Rosalie’s funeral was this afternoon at three; that’d be six eastern time. It should be on the late news.

  By seven-thirty I was at my typewriter, not knowing whether I was writing a high-class biography with a theme, or a poor imitation of Hume Mason quickie. Whatever else it was, it had to be fast, so I banged away, mindless of the nuances of style, mood, and tone; just getting down the facts, ma’am.

  At eight there was a tap at the door. Probably Simcoe coming to tell me I was typing too loud, disturbing the wife’s vigil at the window. A scowl deepened to a glower when I pull the door open on Brad O’Malley. He was resplendent in a blue-and-white striped seersucker suit, all freshly shaved and combed, and smelling of whatever expensive scent he used.

  “Whatever you want, the answer is no,” I said baldly, and slammed the door. Or tried to.

  He got the toe of his Gucci in it and pulled it open again before the lock caught. “You better wait to hear what I’ve got to say. It’s not a request. I’m leaving.”

  “Good! If I’d had one wish, that would be it.” My exclamation was loud and clear, and totally insincere. I felt as though the bottom was falling out of my stomach.

  “Don’t hire a band yet. I’ll be back,” he said grimly.

  My stomach began rising again. “You can’t win ‘em all.”

  “I tried to figure out what you were talking about, after you left yesterday. You think I’m Hume Mason, right?”

  “I know you’re Hume Mason, Mr. Mason. Maybe you’re Brad O’Malley too. I know if I wrote that kind of crap, I’d use an alias.”

  “Pen name is the word you’re looking for. Pseudonym would do. Alias has a whiff of criminality to it.”

  “Thanks for the lecture, Professor. I’ll stick to alias.”

  “Don’t you want to hear why I’m leaving?”

  “I never look a gift horse in the mouth.”

  “The reason I’m here is that I had a call from my wife last night. My son’s in the hospital. Fell out of a tree, broke his leg rather badly. I have to go and see him.” He examined me for traces of softening, and found instead a new rigidity.

  “You neglected to mention there’s a Mrs. Mason.”

  “We’ve been divorced for years,” he said, dismissing wife, child, and marriage with a wave of his hand.

  “I can believe that. The mystery is how you ever talked anyone into marrying you in the first place.” This speech was accompanied by a wrestling match, during which I succeeded in shoving him physically out the door.

  Once he was out, I went to the window to make sure he really left. He only took one of his Vuitton bags with him. With a quick glance at his Rolex, he hopped into his car and burned rubber.

  A wife yet! A son—details too trivial to mention. He probably wasn’t even divorced. And through all this mental abuse, the thought kept popping up, like a helium-filled balloon, bright and beautiful, that he was coming back. A half hour later, it also occurred to me that I hadn’t found out where this wife and son lived. Probably in upstate New York, where he taught—if Hume Mason actually had time to teach between books that appeared with monotonous regularity, flooding book racks and driving out more worthwhile books.

  In any case, he wasn’t abandoning his opus on Rosalie. This was some new scheme to fool me, but I’d outwit him. I’d beat him to print if I had to work night and day. Working was a good way to drive from my mind the image that haunted me: the perfect man. Physically perfect, that is.

  Today should, by rights, have been only a minute or so longer than yesterday. It seemed to have about ninety-eight hours. Nobody could work for ninety-eight hours, so I had plenty of time to fret and fume. The arrival of the postman with a box of books for Mr. O’Malley, bearing the Belton label, didn’t brighten the day much. Simcoe had apparently suggested leaving the box with me. I was surprised Mason had another book ready for release so soon after his Dean Mather story.

  Surely this first day of summer should have been glorious weather-wise. Instead it started with a watery white sky in the morning, darkening to pale gray, and as the sun set, ominous purple-black clouds hung low over the river. A cold wind blew off the water. I imagined it originating in the polar ice caps, blowing across muskeg and prairies, picking up moisture from the river, before whistling in around the edges of door and windows.

  It was downright eerie, being alone at night in a cottage in the middle of nowhere, with the wind battering the tall pines outside, occasionally tearing loose a branch that fell with a crack to the ground. Old Mother Nature was really in an uproar. When the rain began pelting the roof, lashing the windows and trickling in around the edges of the frames, I put on a sweater and wool socks, and was still cold. There wasn’t even a fireplace to take the chill from the air. Who ever heard of a cottage without a fireplace?

  I turned on the TV and watched a celebrity interview show. My interest was piqued when Rosalie Wildewood was one of the guests. She was doing a pitch of Love’s Last Longing. She was as beautiful as any of her own heroines. Clouds of titian hair billowed around her face. “I’m a true romantic,” she said. “Love is the lodestone of my life. A day without love is like a day without orange juice.”

  She looked surprised when the interviewer laughed, and offended when he suggested her love of love was extremely profitable. “It fills a need,” she explained.

  “What is your next book about?” he asked. She held Love’s Last Longing up to the camera and launched into the tale of the ruined young heroine, the Mogul emperor, and the prince. “I mean the one you’re working on now,” he pointed out.

  It was a turn-of-the-century saga featuring a ruined young heroine, a judge, and a prince. The interviewer suggested the trappings changed; the heroine’s trap, and the plot, didn’t. Rosalie looked confused, but not offended. How did that beautiful nitwit write so well? She must be shy in front of the camera, I thought.

  When the interview was over, I got my copy of Love’s Last Longing and settled in to read. Coffee would warm me. I put a small pot on to perk, and rattled in the cupboard for a mug. It was while I had the fridge door open that the cottage was plunged into utter blackness, without any warning. I yelped in surprise, then emitted a howl of dismay as I realized what had happened. The power was gone, due to the storm. And not even a candle in the place! Fear rose insensibly to panic, till I remembered seeing a kerosene lamp in the second bedroom. I twisted a sheet of newspaper into a tight roll, lit it with my lighter, and went into the bedroom. The lamp wouldn’t have any fuel; I knew it as surely as I knew the power would stay off all night.

  Incredibly, it had two inches of pale liquid visible in its dusty, transparent base. I lit the wick and dashed through the dark cottage to dowse the burning paper in the sink. I stumbled back through the dark for the lamp, put the shade on, and went into the living room, trembling but relieved. There’s no reason to be scared, I told myself sternly. You’re no more likely to be attacked in the dark than with the lights on. Except that it was so impenetrably dark out there, with no streetlights, and no moon. A man could walk right up to the door unseen. It
was the Neanderthal in black leather from the bar who came to mind. He wouldn’t even have to lurk behind a tree or bush.

  A menacing rattle of thunder sounded in the distance, followed by a ragged streak of lightning that, for one brief instant, cast charcoal treetops into relief against the silver sky. At least I wasn’t one of those chickens who was afraid of thunder and lightning.

  There was really nothing to be afraid of. I’d just sit down, read the book, watch some TV. Idiot! The power is off. All right, sit down calmly and think. There, I think the rain is letting up. It’s not pounding as hard as it was. You haven’t read today’s newspaper. If you put the lamp on the table and the paper right beside it, you can see well enough to read. There was nothing in the paper about Rosalie Hart, and for me that summer, the wars in distant lands, the murders and rapes and other flowers of civilization had lost their significance. I flipped through the paper, but my mind was on my book.

  Deprived of coffee, I went to the kitchen, lamp in hand, to get a glass of milk. Damn! Two inches left in the carton. If I drank it, I’d have to have black coffee in the morning, since the cream was gone. No beer. Last can of Coke then. I’d have to go into town tomorrow. I went back to the sofa and made a list: milk, beer, cream, Coke. It sounded like a liquid diet, so I added rye bread and apples. Maybe some oranges, for vitamin C. The trouble was, you had to eat the sour, messy things. If the lights didn’t come on soon, I’d miss Rosalie’s funeral on TV. Terrific, a perfect ending to this perfect first day of summer.

  There was another roll of distant thunder, another flash of silver light, causing me to remind myself I wasn’t afraid of storms. I wondered if Simcoe was out of power too, or if I’d maybe blown a fuse, in which case there wouldn’t be any power till I replaced it. The best view of Simcoe’s cottage was from my bedroom window. My tall form reflected in the windowpane, the light making me look like a picture of Florence Nightingale. There were two oil lamps burning in Simcoe’s place. Back to the living room to add candles to my list, and a flashlight. The rain was definitely slackening now; it was hardly more than a patter. Or was that just water dripping from the trees?

  I went to the window to check. It was impossible to tell, with so many rivulets racing down the pane. I leaned closer, and froze in that posture, staring, praying I was imagining it—that pair of eyes, not my own. A white moon of face floated in space, there at the window, just about level with mine. It was too dark to discern fine details. Black hair, a slash of shadow across the eyes—then it was gone.

  I jumped back and let out a scream so high only a bat could appreciate it. For some seconds I stood still, everything but my vocal cords frozen solid with terror. It felt as if my very heart were still. My screams bounced off the walls, reverberated, rang. It was a few minutes before I could think. My first rational thought was of escape. My second was that to escape, I’d have to go out that menacing door, where he was. Probably waiting for me with an ax in his hand. Guns were too civilized for this wilderness.

  I thought of crawling out a window at the back, running over to Simcoe—but what if the man had run around to the back . . . I stood, trembling, too distraught to think straight. The telephone didn’t so much as occur to me. When I heard the sound of a car on the road beyond, I ran to the kitchen window. The headlights wheeling right into the gravel path past my cottage made it impossible to see the car’s make, but as it turned, I saw it was pale in color— white or beige or light gray. At least it was gone. I sat on the sofa till my heart settled down to normal, and the shaking stopped. Then, when the terror had passed, the lights came back on. Eager to share my story with someone, I phoned Simcoe.

  “We were wondering who was calling on you at such an hour,” he said. “We thought it was O’Malley, but when the car took off again so soon, we didn’t know what to think,” he admitted shamelessly. “It looked like two people in the car, but with the rain pelting so hard, the missus couldn’t be sure. It was likely just somebody lost. People straggle down this lane from time to time, doing what they shouldn’t. I wouldn’t worry about it,” he advised.

  “You thought it was Mr. O’Malley’s car?” I asked.

  “Couldn’t be sure. I haven’t seen him since he took off this morning. He didn’t happen to say where he was going, when he was at your place?”

  I nearly blurted out about his son, till I remembered Brad and I passed for sweethearts in this part of the woods. “A friend was hurt. He went to the hospital to see him, but he’ll be back soon.”

  “It’d be best if he’d let me know he was going. I’d have kept an eye on the place for him.”

  “It came up suddenly—an accident.”

  I hung up and decided to make coffee after all, even though it was getting late, and I’d have to take it black. It didn’t seem likely Brad was my Peeping Tom. Simcoe was probably right, was just a couple of amorous teenagers, lost in the storm. It was silly to get all nervous and jittery about it. I had real problems, without inventing imaginary ones. Like my heart, for instance, which ached like a sore tooth. It felt actually physically heavy, causing my steps to drag. My jaw ached, too, from the strain of holding it up. It wanted to open wide and wail in grief.

  By the time the coffee was ready, I’d missed the news, and Rosalie’s funeral. I watched half the late show, till my eyelids began to droop and the commercials stepped up in pace. I switched the set off and went to bed.

  My sleep was undisturbed throughout the night, in spite of the coffee, and the window peeker. Even when the burglar dropped a screwdriver on the uncarpeted floor, I didn’t flutter an eyelid. I had no idea I’d been visited till I came out of my bedroom the next morning at seven-thirty, and saw the front door hanging open, blowing lightly in the breeze, just missing the screwdriver on the floor by an inch. I noticed that even before I saw I’d been robbed.

  CHAPTER 7

  “Oh my God!”

  I stared at the large, empty table, where I’d left the box of diaries and letters from Rosalie beside my new typewriter. Everything was gone.

  “My manuscript!” was my next spontaneous shout. Had he gotten away with it too? A week’s work, gone without a trace. I ran around the room, trying to remember where I’d left the manuscript. Had I been reading it on the sofa? No—I’d made a list, read the newspaper. The manuscript had been sitting beside the typewriter. Gone then, the whole works. What else was missing? The TV was still there, a new color set less than a year old. Looking distractedly around, I noticed my polka dot nude painting was gone, and my heart shriveled in regret, but the more serious loss was the manuscript and the research. Anything else? Purse! Had he gotten away with my two hundred bucks in cash as well? No, thank God, it was on the sofa by the paper with my cigarettes and Bic. The wallet was probably empty. I rifled through it quickly—the money was still there. What kind of a burglar broke in and didn’t touch a purse, sitting in plain sight?

  I threw on my dressing gown and ran across the yard to Simcoe’s cottage to tell my sorry tale.

  “The prowler!” Simcoe said at once, his blue eyes sparkling in glee at this unexpected excitement. The wife wasn’t in evidence. “I’ll call the cops. I’ve asked them to keep an eye on us. They never pay a bit of attention. We’re outside the town limits. It’s the state troopers we have here.”

  A disembodied voice wailed in from the next room: “You’ll want to put on some clothes if the police are coming.” As Simcoe wore his usual blue shirt and trousers, I assumed this advice was for me.

  “I will.” I looked down and saw the mud on my bare feet, and the footprints in from the front door.

  “I’ll clean it up. She’ll never know the difference,” he told me with a conspiratorial wink.

  I went home and got dressed. It took the police half an hour to come. Simcoe ran over as soon as he saw the cruiser pull up. I told them what had happened, and gave a list of missing items: my painting, papers and typewriter, with heavy emphasis on the manuscript and research. It had to be a literary theft, with
the other things stolen to give it an air of ordinary breaking and entering. I showed Bucklin, the officer in charge, my full wallet to convince him.

  Officer Bucklin had graying hair, a ruddy complexion, and a businesslike manner that didn’t take kindly to the idea of anybody stealing a box of old diaries and letters.

  “If you’ll just give me the serial number of the typewriter, I’ll get out a notice on it,” he said.

  “Actually it’s the papers I’m more concerned about. And the painting for that matter. It was of a nude woman.”

  A condemning look raked me from head to toe, and he repeated, “The serial number, miss?”

  “Serial number? I don’t know. It was new—I can describe it.”

  He shook his head sadly. “What I need’s the serial number. It makes it easier to get an ID. It’ll be in a pawnshop by now.”

  “Was it insured?” Simcoe asked me.

  “Insure a typewriter? No, it wasn’t insured.”

  He and Bucklin shared another shake of the head.

  “You ought to lock your doors at night,” was the policeman’s next piece of advice.

  “The door was locked.” I showed him where the entire mechanism had been unscrewed. The knob and lock were sitting on the floor. Simcoe flew over to assess the damage.

  “That’ll cost you.” He smiled broadly.

  “If there’d been a dead bolt on it, this wouldn’t have happened,” I retaliated.

  “Can you describe the ve-hicle the man drove?” Bucklin asked. Once a cop learned to spell vehicle, he could never pronounce it right again.

  “It was light-colored—that’s all I saw,” Simcoe told him.

  “Who’s in the cottage next door?” Bucklin asked, turning his questions to Simcoe. “He might have seen something.”

  “That tenant’s away.”

  “It’s odd they’d break into an occupied cottage, and not bother with an empty one,” Bucklin mentioned. “They’d see by the car gone that the place was empty.”