The Last One Left

Chapter Twenty-one

IT WAS ALMOST nine o’clock when Crissy looked again at her watch. She was standing at the bureau in Staniker’s ten-by-twelve bedroom. A mirror was fastened to the wall above the bureau. Enough of the silvering was gone from the back of it to make a fragmented image of the room behind her as she fixed more drinks. She moved slightly so she could see Staniker’s face. The buff-colored windowshade was pulled down to the sill. Though the window was wide behind it, there was no air to move the shade. The rusty electric fan, for all its whining and whirring, did not seem to stir the air.

Staniker lay on the double bed, in pale blue boxer shorts, his mass and weight deepening the hollow in it. He was propped on two pillows. There was an oily gleam of sweat on his face and body. His big face was slack, his speech slow and thick.

She poured him another bloody mary from the big, widemouth Thermos, holding the ice back with the fingers of her free hand after two cubes had clumped into the glass. She took it to him, feeling between the cool glass and her fingertips the crackly crust of colorless nail polish she had applied to the pads of fingers and thumbs. He took the glass from her, and in lifting it to his lips, spilled some on his broad chest, wiped at it with his other hand.

She went back to the bureau and fixed herself a weak bourbon and soda. She wore navy blue slacks. She had rolled them up to just below her knees. The dark kerchief was in the pocket of the slacks. The waistband of the slacks was damp with sweat. She had taken off the forest green silk shirt with long sleeves and tossed it onto a chair. The roots of her hair were damp. A drop of sweat ran down between her breasts to soak into the brassiere band under her breasts, and another trickled from her armpit down to the side of the slacks. She wondered how long he was going to hold out.

“Absolooly dead,” he said in a tone of heavy complaint. “Grayse broad’na worl’ could walk ina here bare ass, n’I couldn do a thing forrer, blieve me. Worryn bout it alla time, baby. Alla time.”

She came with her drink to sit on the side of the bed. “Crissy’ll fix, honey. You drink up and get just a little more stoned and Crissy’ll take care.”

“Sure, sure, sure. Suppose to make it worse.”

“Drinking? It works both ways, friend. It’ll stop a motor that’s running and start up one that’s dead.”

“Whadaya know about it anyway?”

She looked mildly at him. “All there is to know. Drink up, buddy boy. When I met the Senator I was a first class hooker. That’s how I met him. I got talent you need. Drink up.”

When he lowered the glass there was an inch left in it. He stared owlishly at her. “Figures. B’God, it figures.”

“Did I make the marys too spicy, Captain?”

“Just right, baby. Got a real stick in ’em. Hittin me pree good.”

Damn well told there’s a stick in them, lover, she thought. Four of the big bombs, the blue and yellow ones. Fer brought them when I was having trouble sleeping. Never take more than one, he said. After the first one, I wasn’t likely to. It scared me. It reached up and yanked me under, like a barracuda hitting a floating gull. That left two, and I flushed them down, just in case.

“Gedda work, kid,” he mumbled. “Get busy.”

She lifted the glass out of his slack hand and went back to the bureau. She had made a small sample first, taken a cautious sip. If there was a taste to the drug, the tomato juice, salt, pepper, lime juice, tabasco, worcestershire and vodka overwhelmed it.

“Better have a fresh one handy,” she said. “This is a celebration, Garry. Right?”

“Funny about at guy knowing about the money...” His voice trailed off. She ran back to the bed. His eyes were closed. She shook him.

“Hey! Garry. What guy?”

“Uh. Brother.” His eyes wavered, trying to focus.

“What brother, dammit?”

“Boy — Boys — Boylston. Nice fella.” His eyes closed and his jaw sagged. She shook him. She plucked a fold of belly flesh and twisted it. She thumbed his eyelid back. She straightened and took a long breath and let it out.

She took both glasses into the bathroom and rinsed them out. She took them back to the bedroom and packed the glasses, Thermos, the bottle of soda and bottle of bourbon back into the dark overnight bag she had brought. She took it into the dark living room and put it down by the front door. She remembered how she had worried about him not seeing her car out there. But when he had asked about it, and she had said with a practiced casualness, “I can’t get the damned thing into reverse gear, so I had to leave it down the street,” he had accepted it without question.

She found the living room light switch beside the door, clicked the lights on and off once, quickly. She looked out the window and saw Olly emerge from the shrubbery and come quickly to the front door. It stuck. She yanked it open and he brushed past her. “Is he...”

“Out cold. Yes. You don’t have to whisper, honey.”

“What took so long?”

“He’s a big man. He kept hanging on and hanging on. Come on.”

Following her down the short hallway he whispered, “Why have you got your shirt off?”

“Because it’s hot as the hinges of hell, friend.”

Oliver came to an abrupt stop just inside the bedroom doorway and stared at the big man asleep on the bed. He licked his lips. His adam’s apple slid up and down his throat as he swallowed.

She went to the bed and undid the snaps at the waist band of the underwear shorts.

“Why are you doing that?”

“Will you stop whispering? Please! I’m doing it because it would look damned funny if I didn’t. Will you please help me instead of standing there like a statue!”

He helped her work the shorts off the sleeping man and pull them down and off his limp feet.

“Take the head,” she said. “Come on. We’ve got to get him over to the edge of the bed first. Once more. Fine. No, you idiot! Not by the wrists. We don’t want to drag him. Sit him up and get your arms under his arms and lace your fingers across his chest. There!”

She turned around and backed and lifted his legs and locked a big ankle into each of her armpits, and held tightly to her left wrist with her right hand. “Now!” she said. She heard the boy’s gasp of effort as the big body came free of the bed and hung between them in the air. The weight of him pulled her back a half step and as she bent forward to compensate for the stress, she felt the sweat bursting and trickling all over her face and body. “Come on,” she said in a voice grating with effort, and walked under the burden, taking small steps. The bathroom was directly across the short hallway from the bedroom, and the tub was opposite the door, against the wall, under a window.

It was narrow and deep, standing on claw feet clutching white balls. The porcelain was chipped down to the metal at many places along the curve of the rim. Rust lines ran from the two faucets down to the drain. The faucets were on the ends of pieces of galvanized pipe which came up through the floor boards and through the yellow and white linoleum, high enough for the elongated nozzles, which retained a few flakes of the original chrome, to extend over the rim of the tub. A white rubber stopper was tied by a piece of string to the cold water pipe. She had left the light on, and the buff shade pulled down. She walked to the faucet end, turning slowly, bent under the weight, as he walked his end of the sleeper to the sloped end of the tub.

He pulled her backward and she said through clenched teeth, “What are you doing?”

“Got to get — around the end — of the tub.”

There was a great tug as he let go, as he let Staniker slide down the slope of the head end of the tub. It yanked her back and the backs of her thighs hit the rim and as she released his feet, she toppled backward, twisted, braced herself by getting her right hand against the opposite rim. She was poised there, unable to push herself back to her feet. Oliver stepped quickly around, caught her left wrist, pulled her back to her feet, saying, “I should have said I was letting go...”

“Stop flapping! Let’s get it done!”

He lay in the tub, canted toward his left, head leaning against the far rim. His right leg was hooked over the outside rim. She took hold of the heel and lifted it and dropped it in. It thudded, bonging the tub metal. He slid down a few more inches, feet resting against the faucet end, knees bent and spread, big brown hands laying slack against the contrasting whiteness of his inner thighs.

They were both breathing noisily from the exertion. She wiped her forehead with her forearm. Looking down at Staniker she said, “Now it’s up to you, Olly. Take over, dear.” There was no answer. She turned her head sharply. Oliver was standing looking fixedly at Staniker. He was breathing through his mouth, and his under lip sagged away from his teeth.

“Oliver!”

He started, looked at her with a puzzled expression. “He looks so... so—”

“Harmless? Dumb? Helpless? Take my word. He isn’t. Go ahead. Get started. Put the stopper in. Turn the water on.”

Moving slowly and clumsily, he did as she told him. The faucets coughed rusty water, then cleared into two solid streams drumming against the metal tub.

She touched the boy’s arm. “I’ll wait in the living room. As soon as there’s enough water, turn it off and do it and we can go.”

She went in and sat on the couch in the dark room. She had hoped to be able to send the boy to do it. But he had begun to come apart. When he came out, she would go in and make certain he had done it completely. But it had to be the boy, because if something went wrong, it would have to be her word against the boy’s. Nobody would be able to prove she’d even been there. And if he killed, it would give him a guilt that would break him completely if they were picked up. She sat wishing the boy had had just a little more iron, so she could have sent him, so she didn’t have to wait around, holding his hand. Besides, he’d sworn to do it. Fair is fair. She heard the faint thunder stop as he turned the water off. Time passed. He did not come out.

She stood up and walked swiftly to the bathroom. He was sitting on the toilet lid, his face in his hands. On the floor she saw the new single edge Gem blade and the waxy paper in which it had been wrapped, and the cardboard strip which had protected the sharp edge. She looked at Staniker. His chest rose and fell. The water was tinged slightly with rust, and that was all.

She knocked the boy’s hands away from his face, stooped and looked into his face. “You promised!” she said in a harsh whisper.

He looked at her — a big child on the verge of tears. “I tried. I tried and tried. I... I just can’t. Oh God, Crissy, I can’t.”

She bent and picked the blade up, picked up the wrappings and, as he stood up, she put the wrappings into his trouser pocket.

The boy said, “What are you...”

“Shut up. Just stay out of my way, you damn baby.”

She bent over the tub and picked his right hand up and, holding the blade by the reinforced edge, pressed his thumb against the oily side of the blade, and then pressed his fingertips against the reverse side, the tips of the index and middle fingers. Then she grasped his thick palm in her left hand and held his hand under the water, the underside of the wrist downward. Holding it, she reached under it with her right hand, put the blade edge against the underside of the wrist, and then, pushing down with her left hand, pulling upward with her right, she pulled the blade deeply through, through the resistances of flesh, gristle, tendon. Darkness pumped into the water, threading, lightening to pink at its furthest curling. Quickly, grunting with the effort, she cut through the other wrist as deeply and finally, dropped the blade between his thighs. It ticked audibly as it touched the bottom of the tub.

She spun away from the tub, unsteady, her ears humming, feeling chilled by the pre-fainting feeling blood gave her. Oliver stood there, gray and gagging. She ran at him, shoving at him with her wet hands to get him into the hall, to get him moving, cursing him in all the obscene words she knew. When she slapped him, he came out of it, and went off to get the car.

In the bedroom, with a despairing haste, she put the silk shirt on over her wet body, tied her hair into the kerchief, snatched up the small suitcase she had brought. She heard herself making a small whining sound with each breath. She made herself stop. She paused for a moment in the bathroom doorway, held her breath and heard Staniker’s deep, slow breathing.

She went through the dark living room and opened the front door. As she did so she heard Oliver’s car stop on the other side of the brush just short of the mouth of the driveway. The idling engine ran raggedly. She took a deep breath and made herself think of how she had arrived and how she was leaving, to be certain she had left nothing behind. Nothing, not even a fingerprint. With the coated fingertips she pulled the door shut and tried it. It was unlocked. She had not released the catch on the bolt inside, and it seemed pointless now to make it appear that the cottage had been locked. They would have enough to think about, the people who investigated it, and this would be just another significant clumsiness.

She hurried out, peered up and down the empty street, and scuttled into the dark car. He stalled it, and the starter motor ground for endless seconds before it caught again. After they had reached a street where there was more traffic, she saw one of the oncoming cars blinking its headlights off and on.

“Lights! Lights! God damn it, wake up!” she said.

He turned his headlights on. A few minutes later he missed a turn, and when he went around a block to get back on their route, he went through a stop sign. She made him pull over and get out and go around the car as she slid behind the wheel.

The night was misty. She drove within the speed limits, obeying all traffic signals.

“It isn’t like I thought,” Oliver said in a husky voice.

“What did you expect? Jokes? Violins? We agreed we had to do it. You said you’d do anything for me.”

“I’m sorry. I couldn’t. I just couldn’t. Crissy — it was wrong.”

“So preach me a sermon.”

“If — we made a phone call, maybe they could get there in time.”

“In time for what? He’s gone, baby. Long gone. I saw a girl once with a hemorrhage they couldn’t stop. One of those big rosy Irish types. She got knocked up and a girlfriend tried to do the job with a piece of tubing and a piece of wire. She dwindled way down, all gray and shrunk up, and she looked fifty years old when she died.”

“You’re different,” Oliver said wonderingly. “You’re not the same at all.”

She looked ahead through the mist, slowing for the last turn. “I’m Crissy,” she said. “Your dear Crissy. Look what your dear Crissy did, all for the sake of love. I’m the same. The world is the same world. You make it or you don’t make it, honey. Nobody picks you up and brushes you off and gives you another run at it. You do what you have to do before somebody does it to you.”

“But it wasn’t like I thought,” he said.

“When it’s for real, it never is, Olly.”

She saw the obscure shell road and made her turn. It was a mile and a half south of the turnoff to her house. She drove slowly until the headlights shone on the palm bole she’d had Oliver place across the road when they had driven out, hoping it would discourage any lovers or fishermen who sometimes used this road to drive down to the shoreline.

He got out and lifted the end of the log and walked it out of the way and got back into the car.

“Remember what comes next?” she asked.

“I sail you back and leave you off at your place and bring the boat back here and drive home. Tomorrow I hitch a ride over and walk in and sail the boat up to Dinner Key.”

She put the car in gear and drove ahead slowly. “And if they question you, you don’t know anything about anything.”

“Oh God, Crissy! I... I can’t even stop thinking of how — heavy he was...”

“You’ll be fine,” she said. “Believe me, darling, you won’t worry about it at all. Everything will come up roses.”

As she neared the end of the road she looked to see if the headlights picked up any gleam of metal from parked cars, but the area was empty. They had found the place while sailing. She slowed and parked near the foundations where an old frame house had burned down years ago. She parked on a slight down slope. Headlights shone on his sailboat tied to the small remaining section of an old rotten dock. She turned the lights off and got out. The wind from the west was still blowing gently, moving the mist that was coming off the water.

They went down to the sailboat. She said. “Oh, here’s the car keys. Wouldn’t that be great, to go off with them.”

He put them in his pocket. He leaned and put the case aboard. He said, “I... I’m sorry I couldn’t do...”

“It’s over, dear. It’s done. That’s all that matters. Darling, before we run the sail up, would you look at the main sheet there near the transom on the port. There seems to be a turn of the jib sheet around it and it could get jammed in that roller thing. The flashlight is in that little...”

“I know.” He stepped aboard. She followed him. He got the flashlight and knelt, peering at the lines.

“It looks all right to—”

At that instant she stabbed the muzzle of the single-shot 22 rifle into the socket of his right ear, pulling the trigger as she did so. It made a quick, hard snapping sound. He dropped and the light went out and he began a savage thrashing down there in the bottom of the boat. She backed quickly and sat on the dock planks and pulled her feet out of the way. Elbows and knees and heavy bones thudded against the bottom of the sailboat. He made the effortful grunts of combat. The boat rocked, swaying the tall naked mast back and forth. There was a quivering drumming sound of unseen arm or leg against some solid part of the boat, a muscular tremor faster than she would have believed possible. Then there was silence. The small rocking stopped, the mast motionless. The breeze from the west held the hull a few inches away from the dock, affixed by bow and stern lines. She slid aboard cautiously. He was face down, head toward the stern. She wrapped his right hand around the action of the rifle, pressing the fingers against the metal. She wrapped his left hand around the middle of the barrel, thumb toward the butt. Then she placed the weapon down, butt toward the stern, close beside him, pushed his thumb through the trigger guard, pressed it against the trigger.

She took the little packet of scratch paper out of the hip pocket of her slacks. It was slightly damp. The last draft of the note. Floor plan of number ten. She worked his wallet out of his hip pocket, put the packet in with the few dollar bills he had, and replaced the wallet. She became aware of acrid odors of urine and excrement. She freed the bow line first, as Oliver had taught her to do under such circumstances of wind and mooring. As the bow swung slowly out, she ran the mainsail up and belayed the halyard around the cleat in the way Oliver had taught her. She freed the stern line. The boom swung to starboard, and she let off on the main sheet, and, other hand on the tiller, her feet braced near his back, she sat and sailed northward up the shoreline, staying well enough out for the mist to hide her from anyone on the shore, yet not so far out she would fail to see the corona of the outside floods she had left on against the mist. She came upon that haloed light sooner than she had expected. The only sound was a gurgle of water around the transom and rudder, a faint rattle of halyards against the stick.

She went by the lights and, staying well out, brought it around, close hauling it, pointing it close to the wind, peering into the mist, rehearsing the things which had to be done quickly. When the dock appeared she found she was too far out. When she turned toward it, she turned right into the eye of the breeze. The sail flapped. She thought, with a touch of panic, she would not have the momentum to reach it. She scrabbled, caught the boat hook, leaned and caught the edge of a dock piling. As she pulled the stern in, the breeze caught the close-hauled mainsail, heeling the boat and almost breaking her hold. But then she was able to grasp a dock line in her right hand. She put the case up on the dock. She found the loop and slipped it over the tiller. She let out on the main sheet until the boom was angled far enough out to port. She wedged the sheet into the safety cleat, stood quickly and scrambled onto the dock, banging her knee painfully against the edge of it. She rolled and looked out and saw the Skatter moving out into the mist. The rattle and gurgle died. The mainsail was a tall blur and then it was gone. It would go aground, she was certain, on the western shoreline of Eliott Key.

She snatched the case up and moved swiftly, limping slightly, into the shadows of the shrubbery near the foot of the stone stairway. She waited and listened and watched, and then moved quickly from deep shadow to deep shadow, moving behind the flood lighting. Dressed in the dark clothes, she walked quickly along the terrace to the sliding doors to her bedroom. She had left the draperies a foot apart. She looked into her bedroom. It gave her a strange feeling to see, in the glow of the night light, the woman shape under the light blanket, blonde hair snuggled into the whiteness of the pillow. She put the case down, lifted the corner of the mat outside her door, took the thin spatula, slid it through the crack and lifted the catch free. She put the kitchen implement in the waistband of her slacks, rolled the door open, picked up the case and edged through, into the bedroom coolness, into the place of all her scents and lotions and fabrics. She yanked the draperies shut, reached through and locked the sliding doors again. Took three slow steps and fell to her knees, and then rolled slowly onto her side. She pulled her knees high, tucked her head down, held her clenched fists between her breasts. After each long slow exhalation she felt a clenching and tremoring of her belly muscles, somewhat like the residual quiverings after orgasm. She felt the texture of the rug against her cheek and temple. She smelled her own sourness, a sharp pungency of nervous sweat.

At last she got up very slowly. It took a great effort. She took care of the case first, rinsing the glasses again, drying them on one of her soft towels before putting them back into the rack on the bar. She rinsed the Thermos. One sliver of ice was left. She reached in through the wide mouth and dried the inside carefully and put it back in the compartment under the bar. She replaced the bourbon bottle and soda bottle and bottle opener in their customary places. She put the overnight case in the luggage locker in her dressing room.

After her long, hot shower, and after she had toweled her hair to dryness, used her array of sprays, astringents, lotions which were so ordinary and comforting a part of her bedtime routine, she put on a short nightgown and turned her bed down. She took the pillow she had used for the torso, the rolled bath towels she had used for the legs, the wig and wad of toweling she had used for the head, and put everything away carefully. She had had to go out onto the terrace a half dozen times and come back in and pat and plump and adjust until the shapes of round hip, dip of waist, shoulder, sprawl of legs had looked real to her. She rolled up the damp soiled clothing she had worn. She spread the slacks on the floor, put the shirt, bra, pants, socks and boat shoes on them, and rolled it all into a tight, stubby cylinder and tied it with twine, then remembered the kerchief and got it and stuffed it into one end of the cylinder. They were all old, all ready for discard. She put the bundle in the back of her closet and washed her hands.

She unlocked the inner door, drifted silently through the dark house and put the spatula back into the kitchen drawer and went back to her bedroom, leaving the inner door unlocked. The intercom master was fastened to the wall just inside the door to the dressing room. She depressed the button under the designation Apt, pressed the speak bar and said in a drowsy voice, “Francisca? Francisca?”

She released the bar and waited, and just as she was about to try again, the girl said, “Yes? Yes? Yes?”

Crissy frowned. There was no teaching her not to put her mouth so close to it and speak so loudly.

“Sorry to wake you up, dear. What time is it, anyway?”

“From — uh twelve in the night is maybe ten minutes later.”

“Is that all? I had to get up and then I couldn’t go back to sleep. I took a hot shower and that didn’t help a bit. If I take another one of those pills, I’ll feel terrible tomorrow. Would it be too much trouble to bring me some hot cocoa, and maybe some crackers?”

“Oh, no! No troubling!”

“Just put a robe on, dear.”

“Soon, soon,” the girl said in her high, happy voice.

Crissy opened the draperies to the same gap as before, opened the inner door a few inches, turned off all but the night light and the bedside lamp, then rolled and turned and tossed until the bed lost its too-fresh look.

Francisca knocked and came in with the cocoa and crackers on a small lacquered tray. She wore a quilted robe in a lurid shade of bright lime yellow. Crissy hitched herself up, put another pillow behind her back and reached for the tray.

“Thank you, dear. This is pretty silly.”

“No is,” Francisca said firmly.

“Did he come by and collect his sailboat? I tried to see but it’s too misty to see the boat basin.”

“Is gone.”

“Did he give you any trouble?”

“Oh, no! Never see him.”

“You don’t have to wait for the tray, dear. Go on back to bed. I think this will do the trick.” She put her fist in front of a wide yawn. The girl said goodnight and went out and closed the door quietly.

Just as she was lifting the cup to take the last few sips, Crissy began a violent and uncontrollable trembling. Cocoa spilled on the front of her nightgown and on the top sheet. She put the tray aside quickly, and when it kept on and on, she went across to the bar and poured a half tumbler of dark rum. She had to hold it in both hands. Her teeth chattered against the thick rim. Once it was down she was almost certain she would lose it. But then her stomach accepted it. She turned off the light and curled up in her bed in the same position as when she had lain on the floor.

The trembling stopped like something slowly running down. While she was thinking about getting up and taking a pill, she fell off the edge into sleep.