Understudy for Death

by Charles Willeford

  “Your wife is beautiful, Richard. And you must be very proud of her tonight!”

  “Yeah,” I replied noncommittally.

  “You sort of robbed the cradle, didn’t you, sport?”

  “Beryl’s twenty-seven. If you call that robbing the cradle!”

  “Honestly? She doesn’t look more than nineteen or twenty.”

  “I’ll get us some coffee.”

  At the end of Act Two I didn’t go outside for any conversation with Gladys. I went to the men’s room instead, and stayed there smoking until the buzzer warned for the beginning of the last act. The second act had given Beryl confidence, and she over-played hell out of her role in the last act, but even so, tears ran down my cheeks as the curtain started down. I didn’t wait for it to lift for the first curtain call, and I knew there would be at least five or six. I patted Gladys twice on the knee, muttered “see you,” and scooted out the exit to my car.

  I knocked off the review hurriedly, grateful for the feverish activity, but scarcely knowing what I was writing. For a change, I beat the deadline by fifteen minutes. Ordinarily, I was overtime five or ten minutes, and had Harris growling at me. I cut out the cast and credits from my program, pasted them on a sheet of paper to precede my review, and turned it in. With the extra time I had I wrote a two-column head, marked it 24-point Gothic, and gave it to Harris.

  ‘LILLIOM’ GRABS GOLD RING IN CIVIC’S MERRY-GO-ROUND

  Harris looked at my head, and then shook his green eye-shade as if there was no hope for me in this world or the next. He slashed slanting lines through the letters, making the all caps upper and lower case, and then made a notation to set the type in Coronet instead of Gothic.

  “Play any good, Hudson?”

  “Lousy.”

  “It figures,” he said with grim satisfaction, nodding his eye-shade. The eyeshade, the damned green eyeshade! That’s all he was, and I’d never seen him without it. Without a greenish cast on his face I wouldn’t have recognized Harris on the street. Some day I was going to rip off this eyeshade and expose the bastard for what he really was—the Phantom of the Opera!

  Before going home I stopped at Howard Johnson’s for coffee and a toasted English muffin. There were some bad, bad days ahead of me—this much I knew—and somehow, I would have to get the upper hand again. Beryl had shown me up as a failure, and she had done it deliberately! But why? Why? Why would she rub my failure to finish my play into my face? By some grubby feminine instinct she had chosen the perfect way to show me up as a flunked-out phony playwright. My name— as far as Lake Springs was concerned—was now a cipher, a large round O!

  And the lines—all of those lines she had learned, memorizing them in the only way lines can be learned, saying them again and again and again. When had she found time to do all this, and how could I have failed to notice? For the past five weeks there had been at least three night rehearsals every week at the theater, and she had managed to attend them without me tumbling onto her activity. Of course, I worked at night, but even so…yes, this only proved to show how little the people in this town thought of me! No one, not a soul, not a single friend, had passed me the word. And all this time I had considered Bob Leanard one of my best friends, a guy who was always willing to drop whatever he was doing and talk theater with me. A damned backstabber! Although my mood was savage, I was under perfect control when I got home. The front door opened as I drove into the carport, and Mrs. Fredericks laughed thriftily when I got out of the car and cut across the lawn.

  “You still look surprised!” she exclaimed happily, moving back from the door so I could come inside the house. “Tell me. Were you really shocked, Mr. Hudson?”

  “Oh, yes, ma’am,” I laughed hollowly. “Shocked.”

  “Do you know,” she said confidingly, “we had all we could do, trying to keep the rehearsals a secret from you. And once you almost caught us. Last Thursday night, when you got home before Beryl, I thought we were caught.”

  “You did?”

  “Yes, sir, I really thought so. Remember? I told you that Beryl had asked me to sit because she wanted to see a movie. And then she let the cat out of the bag when she got home by telling you she’d been out playing Canasta. Remember?”

  “No. Unfortunately.”

  “Well, I worried. I really did, thinking you’d surely be suspicious hearing two different stories. But you didn’t!” She wagged a plump finger at me. “You didn’t! I know I’d never be able to keep a secret that long from my husband. I never could lie to him; he used to catch me every time.”

  “Yes, ma’am. You girls know how to keep a secret all right.” I forced a smile, although I wanted to kick the old lady square in the middle of her ample rear end. But Mrs. Fredericks was really a nice old widow who sat with Buddy for free, when we needed a babysitter, and it wasn’t her fault. Mrs. Fredericks honestly believed I’d be happy and excited about a delightful surprise. She didn’t know Beryl, that was all. I did.

  “Now tell me all about the play!”

  I opened my mouth but the old lady stopped me. “Never mind; I’m going Friday night. Your wife promised to get me a complimentary ticket, and I’m taking Buddy with me. And if you told me all about it now, you’d spoil the story for me. You have to hurry now, anyway, because Beryl is expecting you at the party.” Mrs. Fredericks found her purse, handed me a slip of paper. “This is the address. They’re having a cast party, and I ’spect it’s started by now. So just go on ahead and have a good time. Buddy’s asleep, and you and Beryl stay out just as late as you like.” She tried to push me toward the door, but I didn’t budge.

  “I’m afraid I can’t go, Mrs. Fredericks.”

  Before I could talk the old lady into going home—she only lived a few doors down the street—I had to argue for fully ten minutes. After she left I poured a double-shot of bourbon and tossed it off. It was medicine, and I needed the shot.

  For noise and company I turned on the television set. I had another drink, this time a slow one with water. The telephone rang twice while I debated whether to stay up and fight with Beryl when she got home or to go to bed and fight with her in the morning, but I let it ring without answering it. I decided to go to bed; the more sleep I had, the fresher I would be for arguing. But even in bed I couldn’t sleep, and the phone rang a couple of more times, too. No one can sleep when a phone rings. And I kept seeing my wife at the party, a tall gin ’n’ tonic in her hand, smiling, accepting congratulations with false modesty— and people asking, “Where’s Richard tonight, Beryl? Do you honestly mean he really didn’t know you were playing the lead?”

  I rolled over and over in the double bed, twisting the sheets, hearing the raucous, mocking laugher of all the rotten amateur actors as it echoed inside my head, and stared blackly into the darkness. I was wide-eyed, and my body was feverish as the hot, angry blood raced at double-time speed through my veins. If I only had a backyard swimming pool to cool off in, I thought—

  Gladys Chatham has a pool.

  A moment later I was tugging on a pair of khaki Bermuda shorts. I slipped into a pair of loafers, and my hand touched the knob of the front door before I happened to think of Buddy. After all, I was a responsible father, and I didn’t want to leave him alone. I opened the door to his bedroom, but he was sleeping soundly; his mouth was open, and his tangled yellow curls were tousled on his pillow. That was another thing that irritated me. Why in the hell didn’t Beryl get his hair cut once in awhile? Was she trying to make a sissy out of him or something?

  I closed the door gently. The way he was sleeping, not even dynamite would wake him. The telephone rang again, and it was still ringing as I left the house.

  I parked about a half-block away from the Chatham residence, and lit a cigarette without getting out of the car. I felt a little crazy, but I was determined to go through with it—if Gladys was still awake, anyway.

  Her house was the second from the corner, and the first house was dark. The houses were well separated on the block,
and no one was on the street at this time of night. I circled around the first house, cut through the unfenced backyard, and parted the high Florida holly hedge that separated Gladys’s yard from her neighbor’s. The light from the Florida-room made highlights on the still waters of the oval swimming pool. Gladys, wearing reading glasses, and a loose-fitting, brightly flowered Kanaka muu-muu, was seated in a bamboo armchair beside the sliding screened doors opening onto the patio, reading a book. Her husband wasn’t in sight, at least from my vantage point, but it was quite possible that he was also in the Florida-room and out of my sight line. With as little noise as possible, I worked my way through the hedge with difficulty, managing to lose my left loafer in the process. I felt around inside the hedge, once I was in the other yard, but it was as if the shoe had been swallowed by the ground. I should have left both shoes in the car, I thought; and I gave up the search, removing my right loafer. I put the shoe on the diving board, and padded barefooted around the pool to the sliding doors. My heart was banging madly away, but my fear eased down to a controllable— and somehow pleasant—feeling of apprehension as I ascertained that Gladys was all alone in the Florida-room. Perhaps there is a little voyeurism in all of us, but despite my fear, I enjoyed the dangerous thrill of being less than three feet away from Gladys— just looking at her, when she was completely unaware of my presence.

  I may have stood there a full minute, or maybe less, trying to get up enough courage to speak to her through the screen. She had a cool head, but she was a woman after all, and the sound of a voice or a scratching of fingernails on the screen might send her into a screaming fit of hysterics. My courage deserted me, and I was on the verge of turning away when she squirmed uncomfortably in her chair, lifted her head from her book, and looked straight into my face—without seeing me. I could tell by the blank expression in her eyes that she couldn’t see me, but she must have sensed my presence, my darker shadow on the patio—or she may have heard the sound of my breathing.

  “Hi, Gladys,” I whispered softly, “can you come out and play tonight?”

  The first thing she did was to remove her glasses. She shoved them under one of the small cushions beside her, as if to hide them, and shook her head disapprovingly. She tried to compress her lips in reproof, but she smiled in spite of her efforts to appear exasperated by my unexpected appearance. She was a damned unusual woman, all right, to remain so cool, even if she had recognized my voice. I moved in close to the screen so she would know that it was I, her playmate of the day, beyond any lingering doubt.

  She put a warning forefinger to her lips, and looked over her shoulder toward the hallway. I backed away from the sliding screens to the edge of the pool, and sat down on the steps to the diving board. She slid open the screen door and joined me in the semi-darkness. “You damned fool,” she said, more amused than angered, “what are you doing here?”

  “Cigarette?” I suggested, holding out my package.

  “Don’t you dare light a match!” she whispered. “Victor might see it. He only went to bed a few minutes ago, and I know he isn’t asleep yet.”

  It was a wise precaution; the bedroom window opened onto the backyard patio and pool, and although the window was dark, it was a cinch the Venetian blinds were up on such a hot night. I put the pack back in the pocket of my shorts.

  “It’s such a nice warm night,” I said, “I thought a moonlight swim in your pool would be fun.”

  “There’s no moon.”

  “I thought of that.” I reached forward, caught the loose folds of the unattractive garment she was wearing, and pulled her toward me. I kissed her on the mouth, and she shivered, enjoying, no doubt, the same mixture of fear and delight that I felt myself.

  “You really are crazy,” she said at last, breaking away from me, pushing me away, her hands flat against my bare chest, and trying to suppress a giggle of excitement. “But then, so am I. Wait a second.”

  I sat down on the diving-board steps again, not because I wanted to sit down—I wanted to run away as fast as I could— but because my legs were trembling. She crossed the patio to the bedroom window.

  “Victor!” She said loudly through the window. “Are you asleep?”

  “I was, or almost asleep,” a deep bass voice grumbled.

  “All right, all right,” she replied. “I’m going for a swim, and I thought you might join me, that’s all.”

  “Do you know what time it is?” the voice asked angrily.

  “Why, no, dear,” she said sweetly, “what time is it?”

  “It’s time to go to sleep! I have to work in the morning.”

  “I’m sorry I asked you,” she apologized. “I didn’t mean to wake you. But I’m going to swim nude, so if you get up for some reason or other, don’t turn on the patio lights.”

  “You know I don’t like for you to swim nude!” the voice objected petulantly. “If the neighbors happened—”

  “In that case,” she broke in quickly, “don’t turn on the patio lights and nobody can possibly see me! Go on back to sleep. I’ll try not to splash too loud so you won’t be bothered.”

  Almost simultaneously, the jalousied window slammed closed, and the Venetian blinds rattled shut, as her husband put an end to the conversation. She removed the loose gown as she crossed back to the pool, tossed it down on the flagstones, and dived from the edge of the rounded gutter into the water. I let my shorts fall, stepped out of them, and almost dived myself before I realized that the splash of one dive immediately followed by a second, might be suspected—if her husband could hear the separate splashes through the closed window. I lowered myself silently into the water instead.

  Like most native Floridians, I am a good swimmer, but so was Gladys. It was a dark night, and although there were occasional splashes of light on the pool’s surface from the well-lighted Florida-room, Gladys managed to elude me time and again in the dark water by surface diving and swimming underwater in unexpected directions.

  It was a good game, made even more exciting by the cautious silence with which we played it. The ever-present danger that her husband might possibly decide to investigate the sounds of splashing, or turn on the overhead pool lights from inside the house—despite her warning not to do so—added spice to the game of underwater hide-and-seek for both of us.

  But I caught her at last, in the deep water. Gladys giggled, but she didn’t struggle; she floated on her back, and allowed me to pull her, my left hand under her chin, down to the shallow end of the pool where the water was less than three feet deep.

  Her body was slick and cool; she bent her knees as she faced me, allowing her full breasts to bob and float on the surface for me to kiss—it was similar to the party game of bobbing for apples in a tub of water.

  It was the first time that I had ever tried to make love in a swimming pool, and the problems were insurmountable. Gladys was willing enough; she was perfectly at home in the water. My passion would arise and then ebb away suddenly, and she would giggle as I pressed against her. Or she would lift her feet suddenly, hold her breath, and slide to the bottom of the pool unexpectedly.

  At last, realizing the futility of my attempts, when she wouldn’t cooperate with me, except in a passive manner, I gave up and swam over to the concrete steps that led down into the pool.

  I sat on the top step, with just my feet and ankles in the water, and tried to breathe deeply without making any noise. The prolonged, one-sided struggle had made me weak, and the muscles of my legs were stiff and sore.

  Gladys joined me, standing between my legs, with a hand on each of my knees for support. She wasn’t fatigued; she wasn’t even breathing hard—I had done all of the struggling.

  “You hate her, don’t you?” she whispered.

  “Hate whom?” I replied, with genuine surprise.

  “Your wife, of course.” She sighed gently. “Didn’t you know?”

  “That’s ridiculous,” I said.

  “Then why did you try to use me to get revenge?”


  “Hate? Revenge? I don’t know what you’re talking about, for God’s sake. Listen. There isn’t a married man in the world who won’t take advantage of a little strange poontang when it’s available. And that’s all there is to it, plain and simple.”

  “Are you sure, Richard?”

  “I’m positive.”

  “Well…” She hesitated. “Perhaps I’m wrong. At least I prefer to think so. But remember one thing, Richard, I don’t want to get involved. I’m a happily married woman.”

  The remark was incongruous, but she said it so seriously the thought of laughing didn’t even occur to me. Besides, I was a happily married man—or at least I had been, up until this night.

  “But if it’s only sex…well, that’s different, so long as we’re very careful.”

  I put my hands on her shoulders, but she shrugged them away. “No, don’t move,” she whispered softly. “He can’t see us—he’s asleep.” Slowly, very slowly, she slid her hands along my thighs, and wrapped her arms around my back as she knelt on the lower step. Her damp, thick, heavy hair cascaded over my face, and her tongue, hot and wet and caressing, moved avidly into my mouth.

  “No, don’t!” I whispered, looking apprehensively toward the closed bedroom window. I tried to push her away, but she merely tightened her arms behind my back. And then I was unable to stop her. I gripped her against the metal rails of the ladder so hard I could almost feel my fingerprints leaving their marks in the steel. My legs stiffened, shivering with an urgency of a passion I couldn’t control, and I was completely submerged, drowned in a savage, primitive emotion. But even in the final moment of release, as the highly keyed tensions of my body drained away, and I sat there weak and shuddering, there was still enough emotion left over for me to feel sorry for Victor Chatham, who was sleeping away not twenty feet from the pool in the bedroom. I didn’t feel sorry for him because I was taking advantage of his wife, but because he was a damned fool for not taking advantage of her himself.