Kiss and Kill

Chapter XV

On the way back to Kansas City I casually delved into what Helen had told people in St. Joseph about her plans.

I learned she had told her landlady she was getting married and moving to New York State, but hadn’t told her to whom, or where in New York State. She hadn’t mentioned anything at all to anyone else.

That afternoon, while I lined up a justice of the peace who was willing to marry us on Sunday, Mavis took Helen shopping for her trousseau. Whatever they bought, they didn’t bring it back to the hotel with them, for Helen returned wearing the same shapeless dress she’d had on when we met and had worn ever since. She seemed quite excited, however, though she refused any information aside from a mysterious reference to some alterations being made.

Saturday was the big day for Helen. She went off with Mavis right after breakfast, announcing that she wouldn’t be back until five P.M. When I inquired what was going to take all day, Mavis explained that they had to pick up the new glasses, had several clothes fittings scheduled, and that Helen had a three-o’clock hairdressing appointment.

Helen was wide-eyed with excitement.

“I’ve never before been in a beauty shop,” she confessed naïvely just before she and Mavis left.

My slightly ill-fitting suit having served its purpose of not making me look too smooth to be believable, I got out the plain dark business suit I’d also brought along and sent it out to be pressed. It too was ready-made, but of good quality and fit. A slight increase in sleekness can be expected of a man on his wedding day.

Then I got a haircut, taking Dewey along with me in the hope that he’d do the same. He didn’t take the hint, however, but sat and read comic books while he waited. When I stepped out of the chair, I decided to employ a frontal attack.

“Aren’t you going to get your hair cut for the wedding?” I asked him.

“Huh?” he said.

Getting up, he looked in a mirror, seemed surprised at the length of his hair and climbed into the barber chair I had vacated without further comment.

I told the barber to cut it close.

The result was remarkable. With a decent haircut the boy would have been almost handsome except for the stupid look on his face.

Dewey had worn the same shiny blue serge suit he had on when we met ever since I had known him. It was much too tight and sadly in need of pressing. I asked him if he wanted to get it pressed before the wedding.

“I got another one up in my room that’s already pressed,” he said.

Nothing could turn him into a sleek and sophisticated best man, nor hide his farm upbringing, I realized. But seemingly he was at least going to make the attempt to be presentable.

My preparations for the wedding didn’t take nearly as long as Helen’s. I was all through by eleven o’clock in the morning. I spent a dreary day in Dewey’s company.

I didn’t know what Helen’s habits were, but Mavis was always prompt. When she said they’d be back at five, I knew she meant right on the dot.

I decided to wait for them in the lobby.

Dewey had gone up to his room, finally, and left me to enjoy the lack of his company. At five I was waiting alone by the cigar counter, a spot which gave me a good view of both the front and side doors into the lobby. I’d been there about five minutes, glancing up each time either door opened, but it was always someone else coming in.

Exactly at five the revolving door at the side of the lobby spun, and I glanced that way expecting to see Helen and Mavis. But it was a woman alone, a slim and sleek blonde with an upsweep hairdo and harlequin glasses, dressed in a clinging white knit suit and a yellow three-quarter length coat which hung open to show the smooth lines of her body. Idly I admired her figure as she crossed the lobby, then my admiration turned to faint puzzlement.

Part of my puzzlement was due to the way she was teetering on her high heels, as though she found balance difficult and was in danger of turning an ankle at any moment. The rest was due to the fact that she was bearing directly at me.

When she got within five feet, my puzzlement turned to utter astonishment. The woman was Helen Larson, and she was very nearly a raving beauty.

Stopping directly in front of me, she smiled tentatively. I made no attempt to close my mouth as I slowly looked her over from head to foot.

Mavis’s taste in clothes had always been excellent, but this time she had outdone herself. I had expected her to find Helen something which would compliment her figure. But the knit dress did more than just flatter it. Helen’s figure didn’t need flattery. The dress clung to her body, revealing everything the shapeless sack she had worn previously concealed.

The concealment had been a crime.

High-heeled shoes rounded out calves as perfect as a Varga girl’s, and they were encased in sheer nylon instead of the drab cotton she had worn that morning. But the most startling change was from the neck up.

Expertly-applied makeup had brought out the delicate lines of her face, and a splash of red lipstick made a flame of her full-lipped mouth. Her upswept hair and the harlequin glasses added the final touch.

I breathed, “Why, you’re beautiful!”

She clasped her hands and laughed as delightedly as a child.

I hadn’t seen the revolving door rotate a second time. My eyes had been too busy with Helen. But now at my side Mavis said in a grim voice, “I told her you’d say that when you saw her.”

I glanced at Mavis. She wasn’t looking at me. She was staring at Helen, and the expression on her face wasn’t pleasant.

The four of us had dinner in the hotel restaurant, as usual. Dewey looked astonished for about thirty seconds when he saw the transformation his sister had undergone, but then he seemed to adjust to it and accept it as a matter of course.

I wondered if an atomic attack would wipe the doltish expression off his face for any length of time.

Helen herself was a delightful mixture of glamour girl and child. She was by far the smartest-looking woman in the dining room, but her mannerisms were still those of an unsure youngster on her first date. For one thing, she had difficulty walking on her high heels. For another, she couldn’t quite believe her own transformation, and kept gazing surreptitiously at a mirror on the wall which reflected our table.

Evenings, the Croissant dining room had a three-piece orchestra consisting of a piano, drums and a horn man who alternated between a saxophone, clarinet and trumpet. The tables were arranged so as to leave a small space for dancing, and I asked Helen if she would like to dance.

She looked at me and said in a stricken voice, as though she thought I would immediately call off our wedding plans, “I don’t know how.”

It struck me as so funny that the most beautiful woman in the room had so successfully concealed her beauty for thirty-two years that she’d never even been on a dance floor, I laughed aloud. Helen looked so woebegone I had to apologize.

“I’ll teach you after we’re settled in Westfield,” I assured her.

Though Helen was two years older than Mavis, she gave the impression of being much younger. Not just younger than the prim, spinsterish woman Mavis was now, but even younger than Mavis was when dressed in feminine clothes and practicing all the tricks she knew. This wasn’t a matter of physical appearance so much as a difference in manner. Mavis, as her real self, left no doubt in any man’s mind that she was a mature, experienced woman of the world. Helen possessed the intriguing freshness of a teen-ager.

It occurred to me that it had been the similar quality of youthful innocence which had first attracted me to Mavis years back.

We didn’t do anything after dinner because of the full day ahead of us on Sunday. When we parted in the upper hall to go to our separate rooms, Helen whispered to me in a tone of confidence, “You know, Sam, I have a wonderful feeling that with you I’m finally going to begin to live.”

I thought wryly that it would have been more accurate if she had said she was finally going to begin to die.

The thought stuck with me long after I got to bed, and for some reason it made me restless. It couldn’t have been conscience, for I killed whatever conscience I had years ago. It just seemed a shame to have to destroy so much beauty after bringing it to life.

None of the others had been able to attain more than passable looks, even under Mavis’s expert tutelage. And some had verged on the edge of ugliness.

We were married at four o’clock Sunday afternoon, with Dewey and Mavis standing up for us. In her white knit suit Helen made a lovely bride. The J.P’s wife cried a little.

Afterward, we had a mild celebration in the hotel cocktail lounge, then dinner as usual. It was only eight o’clock when we left the restaurant.

In the lobby Mavis announced somewhat coolly that she was going to bed early and went upstairs. After a moment Dewey seemed to get the idea too, and went off also, leaving Helen and me alone.

Helen gazed at me in sudden panic.

Giving her a reassuring smile, I went over to the desk and had a few moments’ conversation with the clerk.

When I rejoined her, Helen asked fearfully, “What were you doing?”

“Canceling your room,” I said easily. “I registered you in mine.”

When she gazed at me wide-eyed, I said, “I explained to the clerk that we’d just been married. Don’t look so alarmed. It’s all quite legal.”

She gave me a tentative smile. “I’m not scared,” she said bravely.

With Mavis as a standard, the most repugnant part of my past lonely-heart marriages had always been the wedding night, for the women were invariably either fat or bony, and dreadfully inhibited on top of it.

Helen was as beautifully proportioned as a Greek statue, and while she was rather becomingly frightened at first, her inhibitions melted with astonishing speed. Once she was able to relax, I discovered a fiery passion in her which amazed me.

For the first time in the five years we had been married, I found myself comparing one of my temporary wives to Mavis and relegating Mavis to second place.

Another thing that surprised me, though it hardly disturbed me, was that Helen wasn’t a virgin. Few of my wives ever had been, which had often led me to the reflection that even the plainest woman is unlikely to escape at least some sex experience if she lives long enough. But it did surprise me in Helen’s case because of the isolated farm life she had lived. I wondered what drifting farm hand or itinerant drummer had been the lucky man, and what momentary dreams he had brought into her drab life at the time. Dreams which inevitably must have faded to the wry realization that she had served only as a temporary relief from boredom when the man moved on and she never heard from him again.