Melissa sat down on the steps. She found a cigarette and a match in the pocket of her slacks. The cigarette tasted like underdone steel filings.
It was one of those spring mornings in Southern California that are so incredibly beautiful they seem indecent in some vague way. The sun was just clearing the last of the night mist out of the sky, and the palm trees--like king-sized, upended feather dusters--nodded and dipped in polite unison at the urge of a softly caressing breeze.
Carstairs peered out the shrubbery to make sure Melissa was still waiting for him and then disappeared again. The door clicked in back of Melissa, and the Aldrich twins appeared. They looked at Melissa, taking in the slacks and the cigarette and the straggling hair and the swollen cheek. They smiled in a patient, forgiving way.
"Good morning," they said.
"Morning," said Melissa.
"It's a nice day."
"Is it?" Melissa asked.
Carstairs came out of the shrubbery and sat down on the steps beside Melissa with a luxurious, replete sigh.
The Aldriches said, "That is the large dog which belongs to the plump, pleasant-spoken man who rooms with Mr. Eric Trent."
"Yes," Melissa admitted. "His name is Doan. The man's. The dog's name is Carstairs."
"Mr. Eric Trent is very handsome," said the Aldriches.
"So they say."
"We understand that he is married."
"I understand that, too."
"Hmmm," said the Aldriches. They watched her for a moment, and then they looked at Carstairs. "Mr. Doan intimated that we might pet him."
"Go right ahead," Melissa invited.
"Here, Carstairs," said the Aldriches. "Here, nice dog."
Carstairs watched them for a moment, obviously weighing alternatives. Finally he got up and stepped over to them. He permitted them three pats each, and then he went back and sat down with the air of a person who has done his duty.
"We must go now," said the Aldriches. "We always walk before breakfast. Early to bed and early to rise, you know."
"I know," Melissa agreed.
They went down the steps and along the walk. They were exactly the same height, and they walked in step.
The door clicked again, and Beulah Porter Cowys came out.
"Are they gone for good?" she asked. "They're a little too plural for me at this hour."
"What are you doing out so early?"
"I've got to set up the lab for my 1-B class. I was too busy to do it last night. I'm sorry about Frank, Melissa. Were you going to marry him?"
"No."
"Why not?"
"He wasn't very grown up--I mean, in the head. He used to quote me poetry--Herrick and Lovelace and that sort of stuff."
"They're good poets."
Melissa shrugged. "They're more in the Aldriches' style. You know, they're sort of an interesting pair. They're identical siblings. That's why they talk and even think alike. It seems that the one fertilized gene splits--"
"Pah!" said Beulah Porter Cowys. "That's Shirley Parker and her Freudian interpretation of biology again. I can recognize her touch. The Aldriches talk and think alike because they've lived within arm's reach of each other for sixty years, and that's the only reason. I'll see you later, Melissa. Keep your chin up."
She walked down the steps, and Carstairs leaned over and growled confidentially in Melissa's ear.
"What do you want?" Melissa demanded.
Carstairs licked his chops.
"Oh, dear," said Melissa. "Do I have to feed you, too? What on earth do you eat for breakfast? Orange juice, oatmeal, bacon and eggs?"
Carstairs tilted his head back and bayed joyously.
"Stop that!" Melissa ordered. "You'll wake up the whole town! Can't you wait until I finish this cigarette?... Stop it, I said! I'll feed you... Yes, right now. Come on."
CHAPTER THREE
THE STUDENTS WERE BEGINNING TO stir when Melissa walked diagonally across the Old Quad with Carstairs tagging dutifully along behind her. The students gathered in cackling flocks or walked alone brooding upon the pitfalls in academic life, as is their wont. Strangers are apt to be disconcerted by their odd mannerisms, but Melissa was accustomed to them and knew that all they needed was to be ignored.
Eric Trent was sitting on the front steps of Old Chem. He stood up quickly when he saw Melissa and Carstairs and then, realizing that they had already seen him, sat down again reluctantly and stared into space.
"Hello," said Melissa.
"How do you do," Trent said warily.
"I'm tired," Melissa told him. "Will it distress you if I sit here on the steps?"
"Not at all," said Trent.
Carstairs sat down, too, and regarded Trent in a speculative way. He received no signs of recognition in return, and after a moment he snorted once, loudly, and then lay down and went to sleep.
There was a prolonged and weighty silence, and then finally Trent said:
"I'm very sorry about last night. About your own experience, and about the death of your friend."
"Thanks," said Melissa.
"In regard to your apartment. Doan spoke to my wife about getting a larger one. He has to sleep on my chesterfield, and he says it gives him bad dreams. My wife knows T. Ballard Bestwyck. She arranged things with him. I had nothing to do with it at all. I didn't know anything about it. Of course, I'm not going to appropriate your apartment. Doan can get himself a hotel room if he doesn't like my chesterfield."
"That's very sweet of you, sweet and generous," Melissa said and she looked at him with eyes that shone. "Maybe you aren't a bad guy after all--that is, not as much of a dope as I believed you to be at first after reading those sticky-icky things your wife said about you in her advertisements... However, before I can be sure, I'd like proof."
"What kind of proof?"
"Proof of how really sweet and generous you are. For instance, if you gave me back my office as well as my apartment, then I could believe some very fine things of you--practically any fine thing you wanted me to believe."
Trent regarded her with a puzzled frown. There was guile in her face but there was also sincerity. "Well," he said in a relenting tone. "Well..." But then he stopped relenting and lifted his chin with the air of a man who's been taken in by a female before and has no intention of being a two-time sucker. "No," he said firmly. "You don't need that particular office and I do."
"Hmmph," said Melissa, "so that's the way it is. And I'll bet I know why. You think Doan would figure you for a sissy if you gave in to a woman."
"That's not so."
"It is too. I know it is. Why do you put up with Doan, anyway? I mean, tagging you around and sleeping on your chesterfield and all that?"
"There's no way I could prevent him from following me around. There's no law against it. So I thought I might as well make the best of it. As a matter of fact, I like Doan. He's very good company. He's very adaptable. If I want to talk, he listens. If I want to study or work or read, he goes to sleep. Apparently he can sleep anytime, anywhere. Of course, there's always Carstairs. He's a bore."
Carstairs mumbled to himself.
"Why don't you assert yourself?" Melissa asked. "I mean, why don't you tell Doan you'll sock him in the eye if he doesn't go away?"
Trent looked at her. "Doan? That wouldn't have the slightest effect. He's not afraid of violence at all. In fact, I think he enjoys it. I think that's why Carstairs likes him. Everyone else is afraid of Carstairs--at least, a little. Doan is not--not a bit."
"Well, they're rather odd chaperones. I should think they'd cramp your style."
"They don't. I'm not interested in women."
"Is that a fact?" said Melissa.
"Yes."
"Oh."
A shaky voice said, "P-p-please..."
Trent and Melissa looked up. There was a girl standing on the walk in front of the steps, facing them. She was wearing a plaid skirt and a red sweater, both turned inside out. She was wearing her left shoe on her right foot an
d her right shoe on her left foot. There was a circle painted in lipstick on one of her cheeks and a double cross drawn with eyebrow pencil on the other. Her hair was drawn right straight up from her head into a topknot and stiffened with soap or grease. She was holding a magazine in one hand and a fountain pen in the other.
"Please," she said, staring at Trent with dilated eyes, "will you autograph this--this for me?"
She held out the magazine open to one of the Heloise of Hollywood ads.
"What?" said Trent.
"Oh, please," said the girl. "If you don't, they'll take me back to the house and paddle me on my b-bare skin. And they paddle awfully hard."
"Who?" said Trent incredulously.
The girl rolled her eyes mutely to indicate a group of girls standing about twenty yards away. These were all normally dressed--that is, normally for girl students. They were watching with a sort of sly, breathless anticipation.
"What's the meaning of this?" Trent demanded.
"She's a pledge," said Melissa. "This is Hell Week for sorority pledges. She's going through her initiation. They always make pledges do embarrassing things like this--or worse. Let's see your pledge pin... She's a Delta Gamma. Go ahead and sign her ad. She really will get paddled unless you do."
"All right," said Trent.
The girl handed him the pen and the magazine. "Will you," she said, cringing, "will you sign it Handsome Lover Boy?"
Trent made a strangling noise.
"Oh, go ahead," Melissa said. "Give her a break."
Trent was white around the nostrils, but he signed.
"Aw, creepers," said the girl, breathing again. "Thanks a million, and I'm sorry."
Trent handed her the magazine and the pen. "Are any of your cute sorority sisters--any of the upperclassmen--taking meteorology?"
"Why, yes," said the girl. "Four or five of them."
"Tell them," said Trent, "not to bother about studying or turning in any papers I assign, because every one of them is going to flunk the course."
"You mean it?" said the girl. "Oh, good--good!"
She ran back to the group of girls. They opened up to receive her, giggling. The girl said something. The group stopped giggling. Their heads turned in unison in Trent's direction. They huddled and argued. They looked at Trent again. They turned around and walked away very soberly. The pledge, trailing behind, looked over her shoulder and leered gleefully.
"You cooled them off," said Melissa. "That house has been up before the Dean of Women once already this year for lousy grades. Are you really going to flunk them?"
"Yes."
"They'll send a delegation of seniors to apologize to you tomorrow."
"They'll still flunk."
"They'll wail at the Dean of Women and probably at T. Ballard Bestwyck."
"And they'll still flunk."
"You're sort of a determined character," said Melissa. "And awfully touchy."
"You're entitled to think so, if you like."
"Now don't get mad," Melissa said. "I know it's none of my business, but you can't blame me for being curious."
"What about?"
"Well, you act sometimes like you have half-good sense. You certainly knew what anyone intelligent would think about those ads. Why did you let your wife put them in all those magazines in the first place?"
"I didn't let her. I didn't know she was doing it."
"You can read, can't you?"
Trent looked at her, exasperated. "For the last four years--up until a few months ago--I was sitting on an ice pack in the middle of the Arctic Ocean. All my supplies and mail were delivered by jeep plane. I didn't order any women's magazines, and consequently I never saw one."
"What on earth were you doing in the middle of the Arctic Ocean?"
"That's where the weather makes up--the weather that affects the flying conditions on the Great Circle route through Alaska and Siberia. There were quite a few isolated weather stations up around there."
"Oh. Who was up there with you?"
"One Aleut and two Eskimos."
"Males?"
"Yes."
"I'm an anthropologist," Melissa said. "I know what they use to cure the furs they wear. Did these use it?"
"Yes."
"Ugh," said Melissa. "They must have been very sweet-smelling companions. I had the idea that you'd only been married about two years."
"That's right."
"Well, how did you manage it?"
"Do you know where Point Barrow is--on the extreme northern tip of Alaska?"
"I know now."
"Well, I came south to there from my station, in the supply plane, to get a tooth filled. There was a Navy port authority at the Point, and a Navy dentist called on them once in awhile. Heloise--my wife--was there at the time."
"What? What was she doing clear up there?"
"It seems that in her cosmetics she uses some very exotic materials of one sort and another. The juices from arctic lichen and moss and walrus blubber and all that sort of thing. This stuff was collected at Point Barrow. She had a big batch of it there, then. It was worth a lot of money, and the naval port commander refused to assign shipping space for it. She got passage on a transport plane--she has a great deal of influence--and went up to see about the matter. She was still arguing with the commander when I arrived."
"I see," said Melissa. "How many white women were living at Point Barrow?"
"At this time she was the only one there."
"Hmmm," said Melissa. "You'd been up on that ice floe for two years before that?"
"Yes."
"I see," said Melissa slowly.
"See what?"
"Oh, nothing. Just a little matter I was curious about."
"Heloise is a very attractive-looking woman."
"Did I say she wasn't? Is she actually fifty-four?"
"She doesn't look it."
"Not, anyway, after two years on an ice pack."
"That had nothing whatsoever to do with it!"
"Well, all right. Don't be so huffy. I'm not arguing with you."
"What are you doing?"
Poking my nose in your business," Melissa admitted frankly. "You can snub me now, if you like."
"I can't snub everybody in the world."
"That's true enough. Can I ask you something else?"
"I don't know of any way I can stop you."
"Well," said Melissa, "isn't it true that when you got back here again and found out about those ads and sort of surveyed the rest of the feminine population--"
"No!"
"You don't even know what I was going to ask."
"I certainly do."
"Well, I'm not blaming you."
"Blaming me for what?"
"For getting smart and walking out on her."
"I didn't!"
"Oh, phooey," said Melissa. "She agreed to let you go peacefully if you'd lay low and let Doan keep tabs on you until she buried that Handsome Lover Boy drool and started another advertising campaign."
"You know," said Trent, "judging from your unconventional visitor last night, I should think you'd have enough troubles of your own to sort of keep you busy."
"I guess you're right," Melissa admitted. "What happened after I ran you out of my apartment last night?"
"Nothing, actually. I mean, they didn't find out anything except what Doan had already guessed. That Humphrey is so interested in getting something--it doesn't matter what, apparently--on Doan that he hardly has time for anything else. They went up to my apartment last night, and he and Doan both got drunk. The only change that rings in is that they argue more loudly. If you know who that prowler is, you're the only one who does or is likely to find out."
"Doan called your wife, didn't he? When he thought Humphrey would be likely to arrest him?"
"Yes."
"She must really know a lot of influential men in these parts."
"No. She knows their wives. You've seen that enormous monstrosity of a beauty salon of hers out
on Sunset Boulevard, haven't you? Her headquarters? That place is staffed like a battleship.
The Essential Works of Norbert Davis Page 29