Nightshades

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

The way Monday started off, I knew it was going to be a humdinger.

I didn’t sleep very well that night-bad dreams, some involving explosions and fire and hands with guns in them shooting me, then dragging my body down into dark water; others crazily erotic and involving not Kerry but Jeanne Emerson. When I woke up in the morning I felt groggy and my face hurt and the sheets were damply bunched under me. I also happened to be alone in bed: a little fumbling around told me that.

I managed to get my eyes open, to sit up. Kerry was hunched at the dining table across the room, wearing nothing but her bra and panties, playing solitaire. Uh-oh, I thought with a fuzzy sort of bewilderment. Now what did I do? The only times I had seen her play solitaire was when she was angry and upset, and as far as I knew she hadn’t gone out anywhere. Which left me-something to do with me.

“Morning,” I said, more or less cheerfully. And waited.

Silence. She didn’t even look my way, much less quit slapping cards down on the table.

“Hey. Remember me?”

Silence.

“Kerry? What’s the matter?”

She paused with part of the deck in one hand and a red queen in the other. Her head came around, slowly, and the look she gave me would have wilted a rose at twenty paces. “What’s the matter?” she said. “I’ll tell you what’s the matter. You talk in your goddamn sleep.”

“What?”

“In your sleep. Talk. You.”

“What?”

“‘Oh, Jeanne,’ you said. ‘Oh, baby.’ And the whole time you were pawing me and snuggling up. ‘Oh, Jeanne baby.’ You son of a bitch.”

I was awake now, good and awake. I swung out of bed and got up too fast and almost tripped over a chair that was on that side. As it was, I reeled a little and banged into the wall and cracked my elbow. I wheeled around to face her-the Naked Ape, standing there with his tail and his secret hanging out.

“Listen,” I said, “listen, I had some kind of crazy dream, that’s all. You can’t hold somebody responsible for what he dreams. The subconscious-”

“Don’t give me that crap,” she said. “I don’t give a damn about your subconscious. It’s your conscious I’m interested in. Not to mention your conscience. How many times did you sleep with her?”

“What?”

“Jeanne Emerson, the Chinese fireball. How many times?”

“I never slept with her, not once-”

“Hah. ”

“Kerry-”

“Sure. ‘Oh, Jeanne baby.’ Sure.”

“I’m telling you, I did not go to bed with her.”

She slapped the red queen down hard enough to make the other cards jump. Otherwise, silence.

“Come on, now,” I said, “this is silly. You can’t be this upset over some stupid dream I had-”

“It wasn’t your dream, it was what you said. And what you did.”

“What did I do?”

“Something you never did before.”

“ What, for God’s sake?”

She told me what. I gawped at her a little.

“I don’t believe it,” I said. “I wouldn’t do that to you.”

“Not to me, no. That’s the point. You sure as hell must have done it to her.”

“Look, how many times do I have to say it, I never did anything with or to Jeanne Emerson!”

“You’re lying. You’ve got guilt written all over your face.”

“Goddamn it, I’m not lying!”

“Quit yelling.”

“I’m not yelling either!” I was good and mad now, partly because I was feeling guilty-and that was stupid because I really didn’t have anything to feel guilty about. “I’m tired of all this, the way you’ve been acting lately. Accusations, mood changes, me having to walk on eggshells around you all the time… I won’t put up with it anymore. ”

“You’re trying to change the subject-”

“The hell I am. You want me to start confessing; how about if you do some confessing? How about telling me why you’ve been so bitchy the past couple of weeks. ”

She looked away from me. Her face was white, her hands were clenched into tight little fists.

“Well?” I said.

She came up out of the chair so fast she whacked into the table and sent the cards flying. The look of strain on her face was a little frightening. “Did-you-sleep-with-Jeanne-Emerson?”

The way she said that was a little frightening, too, and it took the edge off my own anger. I started to reach out to her, but she backed away from me; her hands were still clenched.

“Kerry, calm down-”

“Don’t tell me to calm down. Tell me the truth. Did you screw her?”

“No. I swear to you I didn’t. ”

“Liar. ”

“I said I swear it to you. She wanted me to. She even… ah hell, she came on to me one night, the last time I saw her. The night she came to my flat to take her photographs.”

“Came on to you? What do you mean by that?”

“Made a pass at me, what do you think I mean?”

“She came right out and asked you to go to bed with her?”

“No. I was showing her something-”

“I’ll bet you were.”

“-in one of my pulp magazines, and she put her arms around me and kissed me and then… ”

“And then what? ”

“All right. She grabbed me.”

“Grabbed you? I thought you said she had her arms around you.”

“Hell. You know what I’m talking about.”

“No, I don’t know. You tell me.”

“She grabbed my private part, all right?”

“Your private part.”

“That’s right, my private part.”

“And what did you do?”

“I’m not the lustful swine you think I am,” I said. “I took it away from her.”

She looked at my face. Then she looked at the middle of my anatomy. Then the strain went away, and color came back into her cheeks, and her mouth began to twitch-and suddenly she burst out laughing. She laughed so hard tears squeezed out of her eyes; she staggered past me to the bed and collapsed on it and sat there cackling and hooting like a madwoman.

“What the hell’s so funny?”

“You took it away from her!” Kerry said, and let out a whoop that rattled the windows. “Oh my God! You took it away from her!”

“Ha, ha. Big joke.”

“What did she say when you tore it out of her hand? ‘Oh please, give it back to me?”’ Another whoop.

“She didn’t say anything, she just left, and I haven’t seen her since. Okay? You satisfied?”

Kerry giggled and snorted for another ten seconds or so before she got herself under control. “Oh Lord,” she said, wiping her eyes, “I wish I’d been there. I wish I’d seen the expression on your face when she grabbed you.”

“Yeah,” I said. “Well, it wasn’t funny at the time. It’s still not funny from where I stand.”

“Maybe not from where you stand, sweetie,” she said, “but from where I’m sitting I’ve got a different perspective on the thing. ” And she was off on another fit of cackling.

I glared at her.

Pretty soon she quit laughing altogether, wiped her eyes again, put on a sober expression, and looked back at my face for a change. “You weren’t even tempted, huh?” she said.

“Sure I was tempted. Who wouldn’t be tempted? My subconscious is probably still tempted, which is the reason for that stupid dream last night. ”

“You sound angry,” she said. “Are you angry?”

“Yeah, I’m angry. I didn’t want to tell you about that night with Jeanne Emerson; it’s embarrassing. And I don’t like having to defend myself all the time, either. I’m tired of being sniped at and treated like a villain.”

“Don’t start yelling again,” she said.

“I’m not yelling, damn it. I’m not yelling. I’m just trying to talk to you here, get some things out into the open.”

“What things?”

“You know what things. The way you’ve been acting, all this moody stuff. What’s bothering you, anyway?”

Her gaze shifted to her hands. “Nothing’s bothering me.”

“Bull. Come on, what is it?”

Headshake.

“Kerry, talk to me.”

“I don’t want to talk. There’s nothing you can do.”

Wetness glistened in her eyes again, and her face showed more of the strain. She was hurting, that was plain now. And it made me hurt too-chased away my mad and replaced it with tenderness. I moved over to the bed and sat down and put my arm around her.

“Babe, you’ve got to tell me what this is all about. It’s tearing both of us up, you keeping it bottled inside.”

Silence.

“Tell me,” I said. “Please.”

More silence. But then, just as I was about to coax her another time, she sighed and said, “Ray-it’s Ray.”

“Ray? You mean Ray Dunston?”

“Yes.”

Ray Dunston was her ex-husband, a criminal lawyer in Los Angeles. Kerry had divorced him a couple of years ago, because their marriage had gone stale and because she suspected he was seeing other women; that was the catalyst for her move north to San Francisco. She’d referred to him several times as a schmuck, and in my book that was what he was for letting her get away from him.

I said, “What about him?”

“He… I think he’s mentally ill.”

“What?”

“He gave up his law practice three months ago,” she said. “And sold his house and gave up liquor and meat and half a dozen other things, including sex. He’s become a religious convert.”

“What’s so bad about that?”

“I don’t think it’s a healthy thing, not in Ray’s case. He said he couldn’t bear to deal with drug peddlers and thieves and whores any more, but that’s not all of it. Something happened to him; something happened inside him. His new religion… it’s one of those off-the-wall Southern California cults. He chants, for God’s sake.”

“Chants?”

“Some sort of… I don’t know, what do you call it, a mantra? They make their people chant it forty or fifty times a day, no matter where they are. Ray… you never met him, you don’t know what he was like before. Pseudo-sophisticated, success-oriented, a real three-piecer. And now… his head is practically shaved, he wears poverty clothes, and he lives in a commune.”

“When did you see him?”

“He showed up at my place about a month ago,” she said. “Drove up from L.A. with another member of the commune. It was… unreal. Scary.”

“Why scary? Lots of men in their forties go through some sort of identity crisis.”

“No, it’s not like that. I told you-he’s changed. Completely. He’s not the same man I was married to.”

“That still doesn’t tell me why you were scared. He’s not part of your life anymore.”

“That’s just it. He wants to be.”

She said that without looking at me. I used two fingers against her chin to lift and turn her head. “What do you mean, he wants to be?”

“He wants me again. As his wife. That’s part of this whole… this conversion of his. He’s decided he loves me and has to have me back.” She laughed, but there was no humor in it. “My God, can you see me living in a commune with a man who chants?”

“What did you say to him?”

“I told him the truth-that he isn’t part of my life any longer, that he never can be again.”

“How did he take it?”

“Not very well. He wouldn’t accept it.”

“He didn’t get abusive or anything?”

“No. He was so calm it was… well, that’s what scares me. How calm he is. The way he looked at me. His eyes… that’s why I think something must have snapped in his mind.”

I said, “You think he’s dangerous?”

“No, he’d never hurt me. It’s just that…”

“Just that what?”

“He’s called me seven or eight times since his visit. No matter what I say he won’t listen, he won’t go away. He’s just ‘.. there in my life again.”

“Change your phone number,” I said.

“All that’d do is bring him back to San Francisco. I can’t move on account of him. I won’t disrupt my life any more than it already has been.”

I was silent.

After a few seconds she said, “What are you thinking?”

I still didn’t say anything.

She said sharply, “You’re thinking maybe you should go down to L.A. and have a talk with him, tell him to leave me alone. Right?”

“What if I am? That’s what you want, isn’t it-for him to leave you alone?”

“Yes. But it wouldn’t do any good; it would only make things worse if he knew about you.”

“So you haven’t told him about us.”

“No, and I’m not going to. He wouldn’t listen to you in any case, you’d get angry and do or say something stupid, there’d be trouble of some kind… oh, God, that’s why I didn’t tell you about this before. I know you. I know how you brood about things, get them all blown out of proportion, and go off huffing and puffing and making blunders. ”

“Thanks,” I said. “Thanks a lot.”

“It’s the truth and you know it. You’re brooding right now. I can see it in your face.”

I started to say something angry-and swallowed it. She was right. But why the hell shouldn’t I be brooding? Ex-husband gone whacky and involved in some screwball cult-who the hell knew what might happen. It scared me, thinking about it. I loved her; if anything happened to her…

“You’ve got to promise me you won’t try to see or talk to him,” she said. “Will you promise me that?”

“How are you going to get rid of him, then?”

“I’ll find a way. It’s my problem.”

“It’s mine too-”

“It’s mine, dammit, don’t start in now, just don’t start in. I’ll find a solution to this, don’t you worry.”

“ You’re worried. Look at yourself.”

“I’ll get over that; talking about it’s made me feel better already. Now promise me you won’t interfere.”

“As long as he stays in L.A.-all right.”

“Even if he comes back to San Francisco. Promise me.”

“Kerry, don’t try to shut me out of this. I’m involved whether you want me to be or not. I-”

“I knew it,” she said, “I knew it, you big pigheaded Italian bastard!” and she began to bawl.

I sat there. Crying women unman me; two seconds after one starts in I feel awkward and helpless and I can’t think straight. All I was able to do, after a time, was to say, “Kerry, don’t cry, babe, don’t cry,” and to put my arms around her and pat her like some idiot trying to burp an infant. She kept on crying against my chest. I kept on murmuring and patting.

Then she shifted position and put her arms around me, and the crying became snuffling, and the snuffling slowly subsided. And then, to my amazement and probably to hers, she was kissing me and I was kissing her back, and other things were happening, and pretty soon there we were thrashing and humping and making noise like a couple of kids having their first big fling.

Yeah, I thought a while later, when we were both still and my head was more or less clear again. Today is definitely going to be a humdinger.