"I think you're right. But gallons of it." She laughed.
"I brought a fifth of Gilbey's with me just in case. Can I make you a drink in my suite?" Come on, baby. . .
"Oh . . ." The thought bothered her, he could tell. "I don't know, I . . ." Something quick.
"I've got ice and tonic. That's one good thing about never knowing whether the sun's over the yardarm or not." He chuckled and crossed to the door. "Join me?"
"Perhaps some other time. I . . ."
"Have a plane to catch? Come on, I don't bite. At least not on one drink."
She laughed. "All right. I'd love some of your Gilbey's."
In his living room they sat on the couch with their drinks and talked some more. One drink turned into two, then three, and Cummings wondered how long it had been since he'd found her in the billiard room. Two hours? Three? It felt like days.
Finally there was a long lull in the conversation. He swirled the ice around in his glass and watched it as it melted. Then he said very softly, "It's a shame you're here."
"What do you mean?"
"In this house. Shut up like this." He paused. "It's like putting a rose in a dark trunk in the attic."
"Very pretty," she said with just a trace of wryness. "It's not that bad."
"Why did he bring you?"
"He didn't want to at first. I wanted to come."
At last he looked at her, trying to appear confused, strong, and tender all at once. "I'm glad you came," he said. "Otherwise I never would have met you."
She laughed. It was not a polite, flattered, girlish laugh at all, but mocking and superior, a laugh that made Cummings feel like a perfect fool. "Mr. Cummings," she said with a hint of coyness, "I believe you want to take me to bed."
"The thought had"—she said it with him—"crossed my mind." He chuckled, trying to retain as much dignity as possible. "I apologize for being so obvious."
"I'm married, you know," she said, "and you're supposed to be working for me and my husband. I don't think there's anything in our agreement about attempted adultery."
The harsh mockery had softened now into a barbed teasing. Maybe, he thought, maybe there was still a chance. "You can't blame me for trying."
"I suppose not. But it's hard to feel flattered when I have absolutely no competition." She stood up. "Thanks for the drinks and for the compliment, though I don't suppose David would think of it as such."
"You're going?"
"Oh, yes. Now that I know your intentions." The smile vanished. "Don't get me wrong. I'm not cold. I'm not a frigid bitch. But I don't screw on command, and when I do, I do the talking." Her manner was cool, but Cummings noticed the way she clenched her hands, the beads of sweat on her upper lip, the way her voice shook ever so slightly. The toughness was an act.
She was scared. But of what? Of him? Let it go, he thought. Let it go for now. He spread his hands and let a smile's shadow cross his face. "At your service, Mrs. Neville. My door is never locked."
Her face grew flushed, and she turned and walked rather unsteadily out the door.
Cummings sat there, unsure of what had just happened. She'd turned him down, but he knew she hadn't wanted to. It had been the aura he'd sensed on first meeting her that gave him so much certainty. Then why had she walked out? What was she so goddamned scared of?
He reached down and rubbed the erection that pressed against the crotch of his trousers. Soon. When they want it that bad, it's only a matter of time. He'd made the offer. She'd come to him sooner or later. He yawned, and stretched almost painfully. Despite the exercising, or perhaps because of it, his muscles were sore. A nap would feel good right now. He tossed off his clothes and showered, keeping an eye on the bedroom through the bathroom door just in case anyone or anything should make a reappearance, but no one did. Then he crawled between the cool sheets of the bed, thinking that he couldn't sleep on the couch all month. No dark images kept him awake, and he fell asleep almost instantly.
He awoke in darkness, and tried to remember if he'd turned out the lamp before slipping into bed. Then a crack of light showed at the other side of the room, and he stiffened, his breath caught in his throat. The door to the living room was slowly being opened, letting a dim distorted triangle of light into the room. It admitted something else too.
She was through the door in a second, so that all he saw was a glimpse of smooth naked skin and dark hair framing a pale face. He started to say "Gabrielle," but her softly whispered shh stopped him.
Then she was beside him in the bed, pressing closely against him so that her body molded itself to his. She was so cold, he nearly gasped with the shock. "Here," he whispered, putting his arms around her. "You're freezing."
She giggled. "I know," she said, "warm me up," and she reached down between his legs and began to pull on him purposefully, like a baker kneading dough.
He moved so that she could handle him more easily, and then kissed her. Her tongue filled his mouth, and he wondered for a moment if this was really happening or if it was a dream. The urgency of her touch convinced him of its reality, and in another moment he was on top of her. She was moist without foreplay and he entered her smoothly, surprised at the rabbitlike quickness of their union. He was usually a slow lover, and enjoyed the hundred touches, licks, and teases of long foreplay, but there was something about Gabrielle Neville, he thought, that made him priapic. As he thrust again and again and felt her answer back with equal force, he was amazed at the transition that seemed to have taken place in her. The aura, he said to himself, the aura never lies.
But suddenly he realized that now, when it should have been at its height, he could not detect it at all.
He froze, although she kept moving beneath him. Then she seemed to notice his lack of activity, and moaned. "What's wrong? Baby? What's wrong? Oh, keep going, keep moving, baby," and her fingers began playing with the space behind his scrotum. He hardened again and started to move.
So what? Aura or not, who cares? He was freaking a little, that was all, thinking things that didn't make any sense. Aura schmaura. Her whole fucking body's an aura! And he slammed against her, driving them both to a climax that lasted until he fell into an exhausted sleep.
~*~
Cummings didn't remember her leaving, but he was alone in the bed when he awoke. He felt totally rested, and figured he must have been out a good eight or nine hours. He reached over and turned on the bedside light, then flipped back the sheets.
The bed was rumpled as hell, but there were no stiff stains to bear evidence to their lovemaking. It had all, he thought with satisfaction, been tucked neatly away. He wondered if she was on the pill, and hoped that she wasn't, that maybe he'd knocked her up.
Congratulations, Mr. Neville, you're the father of a bouncing baby Cummings.
He ran his finger over her pillow, hoping to pick up a stray hair for remembrance, but there was nothing. In fact, the pillow was fluffed up, so that there was no indentation from where her head had rested. In case Neville should walk in on me while I'm sleeping, no doubt. Not often you meet a good fuck who's smart too.
He got dressed. Though he'd thought of washing up, he decided against it. He liked the dried feel of her on his groin. If he ran into Neville, maybe the man would smell his wife's sex exuding from Cummings. That would be nice.
He didn't meet Neville, but he did meet Gabrielle. She was in the kitchen eating an apple and talking with George McNeely.
"Hello, Seth," said McNeely. "Seen any ghosts lately?”
“Please, George," Gabrielle said. "It's nothing to joke about."
McNeely shook his head. "Forgive me, but I think you're wrong. We've got to joke about them, like we joke about death. It's the only way we can accept them without descending into pathos." He smiled apologetically and stood up. "Join us for pinochle, Seth? Kelly's looking for the cards and it's a better game four-handed than three."
Cummings considered and nodded. "I need a bite first," he said.
"No rush." McNeel
y smiled. "We'll be playing in the den."
He walked out, leaving Cummings alone with Gabrielle, who had nearly finished her apple. Cummings sat next to her at the table. "I enjoyed that," he said softly.
She looked at him, not saying anything, a question in her eyes.
"You left abruptly," he went on. "I didn't know you'd gone until I woke up."
"What are you talking about?"
He chuckled. "Like games, don't you?"
She stared at him coldly. "Pinochle," she said. "I like pinochle a lot more than this game, Mr. Cummings."
"Seth," he said. "I think we could at least be on a first name basis again, huh?"
"If you think trying to seduce me makes us intimates . . ."
"Trying? Hold on, lady, I just set the stage, you made the entrance." He grinned. "And I'm ready for an encore whenever you are."
She stood up and hurled the apple core into the sink. "They'll be waiting for us," she said, and stormed from the room.
"Jesus," he whispered under his breath, wondering what dumbass two-faced broad he'd found this time. He'd met her type before, the ones who fucked only in bed, who'd cold-shoulder you at a cocktail party even though you'd just humped their brains out the day before. But meet them at the motel that night and they'd be all over you.
Hypocrites. Fucking hypocritical cunts. He sighed and took the milk from the refrigerator. He'd just have to put up with it if he didn't want to go pussyless for a month. She'd come to him when she was hot again, and that couldn't be too long.
And then he'd show her. Then he'd make her pay.
~*~
The pinochle session went longer than Cummings liked. He and Wickstrom were partners, and McNeely and Gabrielle beat them at a steady three to one pace, due mostly to Wickstrom's inability to recall the cards played. There was little conversation, as everyone was concentrating on the play, though Cummings noticed McNeely glancing sideways at him on occasion, almost as if he could read Cummings's cards from his expression.
It was after McNeely and Gabrielle won their ninth game that Wickstrom pushed back his chair and sighed heavily. "Wish I had my watch. I feel like we've been going for twenty-four hours."
"Yeah," agreed McNeely, “believe I've had it myself. All the suits are starting to look alike."
"Think I'll hit the sack for a bit," said Wickstrom.
"This has been fun," Gabrielle said. "Let's do it again sometime."
McNeely laughed. "Sometime is right. How about Thursday evening promptly at eight o'clock?"
"I'll set my watch," Wickstrom said. "G'bye all." He was gone.
"I'm on a slightly different schedule," said Cummings, directing the remark ever so slightly to Gabrielle. "I think I'll have a workout first, then a bit of a catnap. It's been a pleasure getting whipped by you two. Perhaps next time I can get a different partner."
"I'm sure," purred Gabrielle, "that George would be delighted to play with you."
Cummings pushed the anger back. "I was thinking of your husband."
If he had hit home, she didn't show it. "David dislikes cards," she said with a soft smile.
"And company, it appears. Well, I'm off."
He tackled the equipment in the gym as though he meant to destroy it. After what could have been no more than ten minutes, his muscles ached miserably, and he fell exhausted to the exercise mat, thinking what a thoroughly exasperating bitch Gabrielle Neville was.
And how he couldn't wait to see her again.
~*~
She woke him with her mouth. It ran over his body like a hot wet animal searching for food, while he jerked awake, not remembering coming back to his bed, not remembering anything after flopping down on the mat and falling asleep.
But he was in bed now, and the woman was with him, warm and naked on top of him. He laughed. "Welcome back. Welcome back, you little bitch."
She gave a grunt of amusement and straddled him, slipping him into her and moving up and down until she was filled with his hardness. He grabbed her breasts and twisted them roughly. "How's that, huh? Little toughie, God, but you love to play, don't you? Bitch ..."
Half of him wanted to draw her down tenderly, the other half wanted to cuff her across the room. She moaned as he pinched her nipples.
"You like this, huh? You really love it. Does David do it like this?" And he threw her onto her back and entered her again. "I want to see you, Gabrielle, I want to remember you loving this so next time I see you, you can't give me your bullshit!"
His hand shot out and turned on the lamp by the bed, and he saw that the woman writhing beneath him was not Gabrielle Neville.
Her hair was dark brown, her eyebrows carefully plucked, and her makeup was heavy with rouge and bright lipstick that smeared across her full mouth like a wound. Her half-opened eyes were brown-irised, and her pink tongue reached upward as if to lick his face like a dog.
"Dream lover," she panted, and her voice was identical to Gabrielle Neville's. She grasped his back, and with long-nailed fingers pulled him down against her.
Horror took him then, and he could only whimper as she slapped her hips against his faster and faster, and he thought that if he came now, he would die. So he struggled to pull himself back, pull out, before the heat mounting in his groin could pour out in a searing flood. But he could not. Her muscles had contracted around him, locking him inside her with a grip of iron.
Panicked, he pushed against the sheets, against her. "Let me go," he whispered, "please let me go." His voice was high, like a child's, but still she clung to him, the kneading pressure of her vagina keeping him hard against his will.
"Let me go!" he cried, striking at her and knowing that what he hit was not, could not be, truly flesh and blood.
The woman only laughed, spitting blood from the cut his heavy ring had made. "Dream lover," she crooned, and moaned again, scratching his buttocks so that he gasped in pain.
Then his hands were on her throat.
He didn't know what he intended to do; there was no thought of murder in his mind, only survival. And as he pressed, striving to bring his hands together, to make the neck nothing but a strand to slide between his palms, a blinding pall of whiteness fell over his consciousness and exploded within him. And he felt release.
And again, impossibly, release.
Then the white fire dimmed, and the room became visible once more.
He was kneeling over the woman. Her face was a nightmare of bulging eyes, purple skin, and lolling tongue. Blood trickled from her mouth and nose. Her neck had been crushed as thoroughly as if in a vise, and her stomach and breasts were splashed with semen.
He realized then who he had seen on the bed that first day.
He threw himself off the woman and scuttled into the bathroom, feeling his stomach start to churn frenziedly. He made it to the toilet just in time, and vomited until there was nothing left. As he stood and turned to reenter the bedroom, he did so with the hope that the bed would be empty, as it had been before.
It wasn't. The woman lay there stiffly, her strangled body a mute accusation. He staggered past her toward the living room, and shivered as her eyes, forced from their sockets like eggs in an egg cup, seemed to follow him. The light was on in the living room, and once inside, he slammed the bedroom door shut so that she would not follow.
Her clothes were draped over the couch. There was a thin purple voile dress with yellow flowers on it, a chemise, short-legged panties they called "step-ins," a brassiere, a garter belt, and a pair of long silk stockings hung over the arm. Her shoes were on the floor, and a straw basket-purse was on the coffee table.
Who was she?
The sight of the empty clothes held more reality for him than the corpse in the bed. These homely souvenirs of a life were no ghosts to vanish in a second. They were real, and he touched them one by one, letting the cotton and silk slip through his stiff fingers.
Who was she?
And then he knew how he could find out. The purse was open.
&
nbsp; He picked it up and went through its contents. It was huge, and it seemed as though what was inside had been swept into it from a tabletop in one of the Long Island flea markets that his wife had used to drag him to. There was a Coty lipstick and a bottle of Shalimar, old-fashioned bobby pins and a deco pocket mirror, a real tortoise shell comb and brush, a pair of glasses speckled with small jewels, and a speeding ticket dated July 7, 1925, as crisp and white as on the day it had been written.
When was that? Yesterday?
The coins and bills were all dated before 1926, but the cards and photos were what made Seth Cummings so sure about what had happened. The 1925 New York State driver's license listed a Viola Elizabeth Taggart, born April 30, 1902, brown hair, brown eyes, 5'6", 127 pounds. Cummings found a small black and white photograph beneath the license. It had been taken in front of the main door of The Pines, and showed a fat balding man in his fifties in a brown suit.
The businessman standing next to the girl in the bedroom,
The mistress his arm around her and an uncomfortable smile on his face. On his right was a tall stocky man who resembled David Neville,
The grandfather and on the other side of the girl was a thin ascetic-looking young man holding a book. Unlike the others, who were looking at the camera, his eyes were fixed on the girl's face, a wistful expression on his own.
The poet
His hand shaking, Cummings let the picture drop back into the purse. He felt an uncontrollable urge to run out of the room and keep on running until he found someone alive, alive and real. But he remembered his nakedness, and remembered, too, that all his clothes were in the bedroom. He hesitated, wondering if Viola Elizabeth Taggart would be sitting up, smiling at him with her dead face.
And then he thought, It doesn't matter. They can do what they want with me—make me see what they want. It doesn't matter.
He opened the door and went in. The bed was empty. Of all that had happened, the only sign left was the mark of his semen upon the sheet.
He turned and looked back into the living room. The clothes were gone. The coffee table was bare.
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