The New Black Mask ( No 3 )

Jim Thompson The Ripoff: part III

The story thus far: Debt-ridden Britt Rainstar has been given a remunerative writing job by Manuela Aloe, who becomes his lover. After he tells her that he is married and cannot obtain a divorce, dangerous and unaccountable things begin to happen, for which Manuela seems to be responsible. Having been hospitalized after a terrifying attack, Britt is to be sent home under the care of nurse Kay Nolton. But on the day of his discharge his wheelchair is shoved down the hospital steps.

I was back in my hospital room.

Except for being dead, I felt quite well. Oh, I was riddled with aches and twinges and bruises, but it is scientific fact that the dead cannot become so without having some pain. All things are relative, you know. And I knew I was dead, since no man could live — or want to live — with a nose the size of an eggplant.

I could barely see around it, but I got a glimpse of Kay sitting at the side of the door. Her attention was focused on the doctor and Claggett, who stood in the doorway talking quietly. So I focused on them also, relatively speaking, that is.

“… a hell of a kickback on the sedatives, Sergeant A kind of cumulative kickback, I’d say, reoccurring over the last several days. You may have noticed a rambling, seriocomic speech pattern, a tendency to express alarm and worry through preposterous philosophizing?”

“Hmmm. He normally does a lot of that, Doctor.”

“Yes. An inability to cope, I suspect. But the sedatives seem to have carried the thing full circle. Defense became offense, possibly in response to this morning’s crisis. It could have kept him from being killed by the accident.”

My head suddenly cleared. The gauzy fogginess which had hung over everyone and everything was ripped away. And despite the enormous burden of my nose, I sat up.

Kay, Claggett, and the doctor immediately converged upon my bed.

I held up my hand and said, “Please, gentlemen and lady. Please do not ask me how I feel.”

“You might tell us?” the doctor chuckled. “And you don’t want to see us cry.”

“Second please,” I said, and I again held up my band. “Please don’t joke with me. It might destroy the little sense of humor I have left. Also, and believe you me, I m in no damned mood for jokes or kidding. I’ve had my moments of that, but that’s passed. And I contemplate no more of it for the foreseeable future.”

“I imagine you’re in quite a bit of pain,” the doctor said quietly. “Nurse, will you—”

“No,” I said. “I can survive the pain. What I want right now is a large pot of coffee.”

“Have it after you’ve rested. You really should rest, Mr. Rainstar.”

I said I was sure he was right. But I’d prefer rest that wasn’t drug induced, and I felt well enough to wait for it. “I want to talk to Sergeant Claggett, too,” I said, “and I can’t do it if I’m doped.”

The doctor glanced at Claggett, and Jeff nodded. “I won’t let him overdo it, Doc.”

“Good enough, then,” the doctor said. “If he can make it on his own, I’m all for it.”

He left, and Kay got the coffee for me. It did a little more for me than I needed doing, making my overalerted nerves cry out for something to calm them. But I fought the desire down, indicating to Claggett that I was ready to talk.

“I don’t think I can tell you anything, though,” I said. “I didn’t realize it at the time, but I think I was in a kind of dream state. I mean, everything seemed to be out of kilter, but not in a way that I couldn’t accept.”

“It didn’t jar you when you were shoved forward? That seemed okay to you?”

“I wasn’t aware that I had been shoved forward. My feeling was that things had been shoved away from me, not me from them. I didn’t begin to straighten out until I shot through those doors, and I wasn’t completely unfogged when I went down the steps.”

“Damn!” Claggett frowned at me. “But people were passing all around you. You must—”

“No,” I said, “they weren’t. Almost no one comes and goes through that front entrance, and I’m sure that no one did during the time I was there…”

Kay said quickly, a little anxiously, that my recollection was right. I was out of the way of passersby, which was why she had left me there in the entrance area.

Claggett looked at her, and his look was extremely cold.

Kay seemed to wilt under it, and Claggett turned back to me. “Yes, Britt? Something else?”

“Nothing helpful, I’m afraid. I know that people passed behind me. I could hear them and occasionally see their shadows. But I never saw any of them.”

Claggett grimaced, said that he apparently didn’t live right. Or something.

“Everything points to the fact that someone tried to kill you, or made a damned good stab at it. But since no one saw anyone, maybe there wasn’t anyone. Maybe it was just an evil spirit or a malign force or something of the kind. Isn’t that what you think, Nolton?”

“No, sir.” Kay bit her lip. “What I think — I know — is that I should have taken Mr. Rainstar with me when I went to the admitting desk. You warned me not to leave him untended, and I shouldn’t have done it, and I’m very sorry that I did.”

“Did you see anyone go near Mr. Rainstar?”

“No, sir. Well, yes, I may have. That’s a pretty busy place, the lobby and desk area, and people would just about have to pass in Mr. Rainstar’s vicinity.”

“But they made no impression on you? Wouldn’t remember what they looked like?”

“No, I wouldn’t,” Kay said, just a wee bit snappishly. “How could I, anyway? They were just a lot of people like you see anywhere.”

“One of ’em wasn’t,” said Claggett. “But let it go. I believe I told you — but I’ll tell you again since you seem pretty forgetful — that Mr. Rainstar has been seriously harassed, and that an attempt might be made on his life. I also told you — but I’ll tell you again — that Miss Aloe is not above suspicion in the matter. We do not believe she would be directly responsible, although she could be, but rather as an employer of others. Do you think you can remember that, Miss Nolton?”

“Yes, sir.” Kay bobbed her head meekly. “I’ll remember.”

“I should hope so. I certainly hope so.” Claggett allowed a little warmth to come into his frosty blue eyes. “Now, you do understand, Nolton, that you could get hurt on this job. You’d represent a danger or an obstacle to the people who are out to get him, and you could get hurt bad. You might even get killed.”

“Yes, sir,” said Kay. “I understand that.”

“And you still want the job?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Why?”

“Sir?”

“You heard me, Nolton!” Claggett leaned forward, his eyes stabbing into her like blue icicles. “Jobs aren’t that hard to get for a registered nurse. They aren’t hard to get, period. So why are you so damned anxious to have this one? A first-class chance to screw yourself up? Well, what’s the answer? Why—”

“I’m trying to tell you, Sergeant! If you’ll just—”

“You some kind of a bum or something? A nut? Too dumb or shiftless to make out on a regular job? Or maybe you’re working an angle, hmmm. You’re a plant. You’re going to do a job on Britt yourself.”

Kay was trembling all over. Her face had turned from white to red to a mixture of the two, and now it was a beautiful combination flushed cream and reddish-streaked pastels.

Her mouth opened, and I braced myself for a yell. But she spoke very quietly, with only a slight shakiness hinting at the anger which she must have felt.

“I want the job, Sergeant Claggett, for two reasons. One is that I like Mr. Rainstar. I like him very much, and I want to help him.”

“Thank you, Kay,” I mumbled — I had to say something, didn’t I? — stealing a glance at Claggett. “I, uh, like you, too.”

“Thank you, Mr. Rainstar. The second reason I want the job, Sergeant Claggett, is because I’m not sure I belong in nursing. I want to find out whether I do or not before it’s too late to change to another field. So…

So she wanted to take what would probably be the toughest job she would ever encounter as a nurse. If she could measure up to it, fine. If not, well, that was also all right She would either make or break quickly. Her mind would be made up for her, and without any prolonged wavering, any mental seesawing.

“Those are my reasons for wanting the job, Sergeant Claggett. I hope they’re enough, because I can’t give you any others.”

Kay finished speaking, sat very straight and dignified in her chair, hands folded primly in her lap. I wanted to take her in my arms and kiss her. But I had felt that way before, with results that were not always happy for me. Except for that pleasant weakness, I would not be where I was now, with a nose which I could barely see around.

Claggett scrubbed his jaw thoughtfully, then cocked a brow at me. I cocked one at him, making it tit for tat. He grinned at me narrowly, acknowledging my studiously equivocal position.

“Well, now, young woman,” he said, “a fine speech like that must have taken a lot out of you. Suppose you take a relief or have lunch, and come back in about an hour?”

“Well” — Kay stood hesitantly — “I really don’t mind waiting, Sergeant. In fact—”

“I want to talk to Mr. Rainstar privately. Some other business. We’ll settle this job matter when you get back.”

“I see. Well, whatever you say, sir.”

Kay nodded to us, and left.

Claggett stretched his legs in front of him, and said he was glad to get that out of the way. “Now, to pick up on your accident—”

“Just a minute, Jeff,” I said. “You said we had that out of the way. You’re referring to Nurse Nolton’s employment?”

“Let it ride, will you?” He gestured impatiently. “I was going to tell you that I dropped in on PXA this morning. Just a routine visit, you know, to tell them about the accident to their favorite employee.”

“Well?” I said.

“Pat was pretty shook up about it. Reacted about the same as he did on my first visit. Kind of worried and angry, you know, like he might get hurt by a mess he wasn’t responsible for. Then he turned sort of foxy and clammed up. Because — as I read him — he knew we’d have a hell of a time proving anything against his niece, even though she had ordered the hit.”

“Yes?” I frowned. “How do you mean?”

“She’s in the hospital, Britt. Saint Christopher’s. She’s been there since just before midnight last night. Two highly reputable doctors in attendance, and they’re not giving out any information nor allowing any visitors.”

I gulped, blinked at him stupidly. I moved my nose out of the way, and had a small drink of water.

“Quite a coincidence, wouldn’t you say, Britt?” He winked at me narrowly. “Kind of an unusual alibi, but she’s kind of an unusual girl.”

“Maybe she really is sick,” I said. “She could be.”

“So she could.” Claggett shrugged. “It’s practically a cinch that she is, in that hospital with those doctors. But that doesn’t keep it from being a very convenient time to be sick. She could’ve set the deal up, then put herself well out of the way of it with a nice, legitimate sickness.”

“Oh, well, yeah.” I nodded slowly. “A fake attempt at suicide. Or an appendicitis attack — acute but simulated.”

“Possibly, but not necessarily,” Claggett said, and then pointed out that Manny had been under a great deal of nervous stress. She had concealed it, but this itself had added to the tension. Finally, after doing that which only she could do, she had collapsed with exhaustion.

“It’s my guess that she did pretty much the same thing, after her husband’s death. About the only difference is that she needed more time to recuperate then, and she went into seclusion.”

I said that killing her husband would certainly have put a lot of strain on her. But where was the evidence that she had killed him? He was only one of many who had died during the hurricane.

“Right,” said Claggett, “but the other deaths were all from drowning or being buried under the wreckage. Her husband apparently was killed by flying timbers; in other words, he was out in the open at the time the hurricane struck. Of course, he could have been, and might have been. But…”

He broke off and spread his hands expressively. I wet my lips nervously, then brushed a hand against them.

“I see what you mean,” I said. “She could have battered the hell out of him, beaten him to death. Then dragged his body outside.”

“That’s what I mean,” said Claggett.

From the hallway, there came the muted clatter of dishes, the faint aromas of the noon meals. They were not exactly appetite-stimulating; and I had to swallow down nausea as Claggett and I continued our conversation.

“Jeff,” I said at last. “I just don’t see how I can go through with this. How the hell can I, under the circumstances?”

“You mean, seeing Miss Aloe?”

“Of course, that’s what I mean! I can’t do the pamphlets without seeing her. I’ll have to confer with her more or less regularly.”

“Well…” Claggett sighed, then shrugged. “If you can’t, you can’t.”

“Oh, hell,” I said miserably. “Naturally, I’ll go through with it. I’ve got no choice.”

“Good! Good!” he said. “Let’s hope you can get out of here within the next few days. The doctors tell me that aside from your nose, and your nerves, and—”

“There’s nothing they can do for me here that can’t be done at home,” I said. “And I want to get out of here. No later than tomorrow morning. This place is dangerous. It makes me nervous. A lot of people die in hospitals.”

Claggett chuckled knowingly. “Here we go again, hmm? You just take it easy, my friend. Calm down, and pull yourself together.”

I said I wasn’t being nutty, dammit. The hospital was dangerous, which had damn well been proved in my case. There were too many people around, and it was simply impossible to ward them off or to check on all of them.

“At home, I won’t have more than two visitors at most. Manny and, possibly, Pat Aloe. Only those two — only one of them, actually — will be all that have to be watched. I say that’s a hell of a lot better than the way it is here.”

Claggett deliberated briefly, and agreed with me. “If it’s all right with the doctors, it’s all right with me,” he said, getting to his feet. “I’ll be going now, but I’ll be in touch.”

“Wait a minute,” I said. “What about the nurse?”

“What? Oh, yes, she almost slipped my mind. Hadn’t decided about her yet, had I?”

“No, you hadn’t. You were going to talk to her when she came back from lunch.”

“Uh-huh. Well” — he glanced at his watch — “I’m going to have to go now. I’ll talk to her on the way out.”

He left before I could ask what he was going to say to her. But when she came in a few minutes later, I learned that he had okayed her for the job — but not very pleasantly.

“The very idea!” she said indignantly. “Saying he’d go after my hide if anything happened to you! I’d just like to see him try, dam him!”

“Don’t say that,” I said. “Bite your tongue, Kay.”

She looked blank, then caught my meaning and laughed. “I didn’t think how that sounded, Britt. Naturally, he isn’t going to try because nothing is going to happen to you.”

My lunch tray was brought in. Consommé with toast, vanilla custard, and tea. It looked reasonably good to me, but I ate almost none of it. I couldn’t. After a couple of sips of tea, I suddenly went to sleep.

Claggett called me that night to say that I would be checking out of the hospital in the morning. He told me the conditions under which I would be checking out and going from the hospital to my home. I listened, stunned, then sputtered profane objections.

He laughed uproariously. “But you just think about it, Britt. Think it over, and it doesn’t sound so crazy, does it? Sure, it’s his own idea, and I say it’s a good one. You couldn’t be any safer in your mother’s arms.”

I said that wasn’t very safe. My mother, the first woman judge of the State Circuit Court, had taken to the sauce harder than Dad.

“Thе poor old biddy dropped me on my head more times than she was overturned, and, believe me, they didn’t call her Reverse-Decision Rainstar for nothing.”

“Aaah, she wasn’t that bad.” Claggett chuckled.

But what do you think about this other? It’s the safest way, right?”

“Right,” I said.

Kay Nolton and I left the hospital next morning in the company of Pat Aloe and two very tough-looking guards. I don’t know whether Pat was armed or not, but the guards carried shotguns.

A very large black limousine with a uniformed chauffeur was waiting at the side entrance for us. I got into the backseat between the two guards. Kay rode in front between Pat and the chauffeur. Pat jabbed a finger at him, and nodded to me.

“This is the character that was supposed to have picked you up at the restaurant that night two, three months ago, Britt. Too damned stupid to do what he’s told, but who the hell ain’t these days?”

The man grinned sheepishly. Pat scowled at him for a moment, then turned his gaze on Kay. Looked at her long and thoughtfully.

She jerked her head around suddenly, and looked at him.

“Yes?” she said. “Something wrong?”

“I’ve seen you before,” he said. “Where was it?”

“Nowhere. You’re mistaken.”

“You guys back there! Where have I seen her?”

The guards leaned forward, examined Kay meticulously. They made a big business out of squinting at her, stroking their chins with pseudo-shrewdness, and the like — a pantomime of great minds at work. Pat put an end to the charade with a rude order to knock it off, for Nellie’s sake.

“What about you, Johnnie?” — to the chauffeur; and then, disgustedly, “Ahh, why do I ask? You’re as stupid as these guys.”

“Mister Aloe!” Kay heaved a sigh of exaggerated exasperation. “We have not met before! I would certainly remember it if we had!”

I murmured for her to take it easy, also quietly suggesting to Pat that the subject was hardly worth pursuing. He glanced at me absently, not seeming to hear what I had said.

“I never forget a face, Britt, baby. Ask anyone that knows me.”

“You sure don’t, Mr. Aloe! Not never ever!”

“I don’t know where or when it was. But I’ve seen her, and I’ll remember.”

He let it go at that, facing back around in the seat. Kay gave me a smile of thanks for my support in the rearview. I smiled back at her, then shifted my gaze. What difference did it make whether he had or hadn’t seen her? And why should I be again starting to feel that creeping uneasiness in my stomach?

Pat took an envelope from his pocket and handed it to me. It was the bonus check I had so foolishly given back to Manny, and I accepted it gratefully. The money would keep Connie off my back indefinitely, relieving me of at least one of my major worries.

We arrived at the house. The guards and the chauffeur remained with the car while Pat accompanied Kay and me inside. As she preceded us up the steps, he told me sotto voce that I should have a salary check coming pretty soon, and that he would see to it and anything else that needed taking care of, in case Manny wasn’t available.

I said that was very nice of him, and how was Manny getting along? “I hope she’s not seriously ill?”

“Naah, nothing like it,” he grunted. “Just been working too hard, I guess. Got herself run down and picked up a touch of flu.”

“Well, give her my best,” I said. “And thanks very much for seeing me safely home.”

I held out my hand tentatively. He said he’d go in the house with me if I didn’t mind. “Reckon you’ll want to check in with the sergeant, and let him know you got here all right.”

“I’ll do that,” I said, “and you can let him know that you got here all right.”

He gave me a puzzled look and said, Huh? And I said, Never mind, to forget it; and rang the doorbell.

I rang it several times, but there was no response from Mrs. Olmstead. So, finally, I unlocked the door, and we went in.

She was in the kitchen talking on the telephone. Hearing us enter the house, she hurriedly concluded her call and came into the living room, carrying the phone with her and almost becoming entangled in its long extension cord.

I took it from her, introducing her to Kay and Pat as I dialed Claggett’s number. They grimaced briefly at one another, mumbling inconsequentialities, and I reported in to Jeff and then passed the phone to Pat. He did as I did, and hung up the receiver.

I walked Pat to the door. As we stood there for a moment, shaking hands and exchanging the usual polite pleasantries customary to departures and arrivals, he looked past me to Kay, eyes narrowing reflectively. He was obviously trying to remember where he had seen her before, and was, just as obviously, disturbed by his inability to do so. Fortunately, however, he left without giving voice to his thoughts; and I started back to the living room. I stopped short of it, in the entrance foyer, listening to the repartee between Kay Nolton and Mrs. Olmstead.

“Now, Mrs. Olmstead. All I said was that the house needs a good airing out, and it most certainly does!”

“Doesn’t neither! Who’re you to be giving me orders, anyway?”

“You know very well who I am — Yve told you several times. My job is to help Mr. Rainstar recover his health, which means that he must have fresh air to breathe—”

“HE’S GOT FRESH AIR!”

“—clean, wholesome, well-prepared meals—”

“THATS THE ONLY KIND I FIX!”

“—and plenty of peace and quiet.”

“WHY DON’T YOU BUTT OUT THEN?”

I turned quietly away, and went silently up the stairs. I went into my room, stretched out on the bed and closed my eyes. I kept them closed, too, breathing gently and otherwise simulating sleep, when they came noisily up the steps to secure my services as arbitrator.

They left grudgingly, without disturbing me, each noisily shushing the other. I got up, visited the bathroom to dab cold water on my nose, then stretched out on the bed again.

I suppose I should have known that there would be friction between any woman as stubbornly sloppy as Mrs. Olmstead and one who was not only red-haired but as patently hygienic and scrubbed-looking as Kay Nolton. I suppose that I should also have known that I would be caught in the middle of the dispute, since, like the legendary hapless Pierre, unpleasantness was always catching me in the middle of it. What I should not have supposed, I suppose, was that I would have known what the crud to do about it. Because about all I ever had known to do about something inevitably turned out to be the wrong thing.

So there you were, and here I was, and the air did smell pretty foul, but then it never did smell very good. And I was rather worn out from too much exercise, following no exercise at all, so I went to sleep.

I went to work on a pamphlet the next morning. I kept at it, at first turning out nothing but pointless drivel. But, then, inspiration came to me, and my interest rose higher and higher, and the pages flowed from my typewriter.

It was a day over two weeks before I saw Manny. It was a Friday, her first day out of the hospital, and she came out to the house as soon as she had gone to Mass. She had lost weight, and it had been taken from her face. But she had a good color, having sunned frequently in the hospital’s solarium, and the thinning of her face gave a quality of spirituality to her beauty it had lacked before.

She—

But hold it! Hold it right there! I have gone way ahead of myself, skimming over events which should certainly deserve telling.

To take things in reasonably proper order (or as much as their frequent impropriety will allow):

I worked. I badly wanted to work, and I am a very hard guy to distract when I am that way. When I was distracted, as, of course, I soon was, I dealt with the distraction — Kay and Mrs. Olmstead — with exceptional shrewdness and diplomacy, thus keeping my time-waste minimal.

I explained to Mrs. Olmstead that it was only fair that Kay should take over the cooking and certain other chores since she, Mrs. Olmstead, was terribly overworked, and certain changes in household routine were necessary due to my illness.

“The doctors have forbidden me to leave the house, and Miss Nolton is required to stay in the house with me at all times. She can’t order up a taxi, as you can, and go shopping and buy ice cream sodas and, oh, a lot of things, like you’ll be doing for me. I doubt if she could do it, even if she was allowed to leave the house. But I trust you, Mrs. Olmstead. I know you’ll do the job right. So I’m putting a supply of money in the telephone-stand drawer, and you can help yourself to whatever you need. And if any problems do arise, I know you’ll know how to handle them, without any advice from me.”

That disposed of Mrs. Olmstead — almost. She could not quite accept what was a very good thing for her without a grumbled recital of complaints against me — principally, my occasional failure to mail her letters, or to “do something” about a possible invasion by rats. Still, I was sure she would cooperate, since she had no good reason to do otherwise, and I said as much to Kay.

She said flatly that I didn’t know what I was talking about, then hastily apologized for the statement.

“I’m here to help you, Britt, To make things as easy for you as possible. And I’m afraid I’ve added to the strain you’ve been under by letting Mrs. Olmstead provoke me into quarreling with her. I — No, wait now, please!” She held up a hand as I started to interrupt. “I’ve been at least partly at fault, and I’m sorry, and I’ll try to do better from now on. I’ll humor Mrs. Olmstead. I’ll consult her. I’ll do what has to be done without being obtrusive about it — making it seem like a rebuke to her. But I don’t think it’ll do any good. I’ve seen too many other people like her. They have a very keen sense of their privileges and rights, but they’re blind to their obligations. They’re constantly criticizing others, but they never do anything wrong themselves. Not to hear them tell it. I think she spells trouble, Britt, regardless of what you do or I do. For your own good, I think you should fire her.”

“But I need her,” I said. “She has to do the shopping for us.”

“You can order whatever we need. Have it delivered.”

“Well, uh, there are other things besides shopping. Anyway… anyway…”

“Yes?”

“Well, it wouldn’t seem quite right for us to be alone in the house. Just the two of us, I mean. It just wouldn’t be right, now, would it?”

“Why not?” said Kay; and as I hesitated, fumbling for words, she said curtly, “All right, Britt. You’re too softhearted to get rid of her, and I probably wouldn’t like you as much as I do if you weren’t that way. So I’ll say no more about it. Mrs. Olmstead stays, and I just hope you’re not sorry.”

She left my office, leaving me greatly relieved as I returned to my work. Glad that I had not had to explain why I did not want to live alone in the house with her. I had no concrete reason to suspect her, or, rather, to be afraid of her. Nothing at all but the uneasy doubts planted in mind by Claggett and Pat Aloe. Still, I knew I would be more comfortable with a third person present. And I was very happy to have managed it without a lot of fussing and fuming.

The pamphlet I was doing was on soil erosion, a subject I had shied away from in the past. I was afraid I would be inadequate to such an important topic with so many facets; i.e., flood, drouth, wand, and irresponsible agricultural practices. Somehow, however, I had found the courage to plunge into the job and persist at it, meeting its challenges instead of veering or backing away — my customary reaction when confronted with the difficult. And I had advanced to its approximate halfway point when I looked up one afternoon to find Kay smiling at me from the doorway.

I stood up automatically, and started to unbuckle my belt. But she laughed and said we could dispense with the vitamin shot today.

“Just let me get your pulse and your temperature,” she said, and proceeded to get them. “You’re doing very well, Britt. Working hard and apparently enjoying it.”

I agreed that I was doing both, adding that I was going to be very irritated if I was finished off before the job was finished.

“Well, then, I do solemnly swear to keep you alive,” she said piously. “Not that I know why it’s so important, but…”

I told her to sit down, and I would give her a hint of its importance. Which she did, and I did.

It was as important as life itself, I said. In fact, it was life. Yet we sat around on our butts, uncaring, while it was slowly being stolen from us.

“Do you know that three-fourths of this state’s top-soil has been washed away, blown away, or just by-God pooped away? Do you know that an immeasurable but dangerously tragic amount of its subsoil has gone the same route? Given a millennium and enough million millions, you can replace the topsoil, but once the subsoil’s gone, it’s gone forever. In other words, you’ve got nothing to grow crops on, and nothing—” I broke off, paused a moment. “In other words,” I said, “it stinks. Thanks for being so graphic.”

She looked at me absently, nose crinkled with distaste. Then, she suddenly came alive, stammering embarrassed apologies.

“Please forgive me, Britt. It sounds terribly interesting, and you must tell me more. But what is that awful smell? It stinks like, well, I don’t know what! It’s worse than anything I’ve smelled before in this house, and that’s really saying something!”

I said I had noticed nothing much worse than usual. I also said I had a lot of work to do, and that I was anxious to get back to it.

“Now, Britt—” She got to her feet. “I’m sorry, and I’ll run right along. Can I do anything for you before I go?”

Mollified, I said that, as a matter of fact, she could do something. There were some USD A brochures in the top drawer of my topmost filing cabinet, and if she would hold a chair while I climbed up on it, I would dance at her wedding or render any other small favor to her.

“You just stay right where you are,” she said firmly. “I’ll do any climbing that’s done around here!”

She dragged a chair over to the stack of files, hiked her skirt, and stepped up on the chair. Standing on tiptoe, she edged out the top file drawer and reached inside. She fumbled blindly inside, trying to grasp the documents inside. And, then, suddenly, she gasped and her face went livid.

For a moment, I thought she was going to topple from the chair, and I jumped up and started toward her. But she motioned me back with a grim jerk of her head, then jumped down from the chair, white-faced with anger.

She was holding a large, dead rat by the tail. Without a word she marched out of the room, and, by the sound of things, disposed of it in the rear-porch garbage can. She returned to my office, stopping on the way to scrub her hands at the kitchen sink.

“All right, Britt—” she confronted me again “—I hope you’re going to do something now!”

“Yes, I am,” I said. “I’m going to go up to my room, and lie down.”

“Britt! What are you going to do about that awful woman?”

“Now, Kay,” I said. “That rat could have crawled in there and died. You know it could! Why—”

Kay said she knew it could not. The rat’s head had been smashed. It had been killed, then put in the file.

“The shock of finding it could have killed you, Britt. Or if you were standing on a chair, you could have fallen and broken your neck! I just can’t allow this kind of thing to go on, Britt. I’m responsible, and — You’ve got to fire her!”

I pointed out that I couldn’t fire Mrs. Olmstead. Not, at least, until she returned from shopping. I pointed out — rather piteously — that I was not at all well. This in the opinion of medical experts.

“Now, please help me up to my bed. I implore you, Kay Nolton.”

She did so, though irritably. Then, looking up at her from the pillow, I smiled at her and took one of her hands in mine. I said that perhaps she would not mind discussing Mrs. Olmstead when I was feeling better — say, tomorrow or the next day or, perhaps, the day after that. And I gave her a small pinch on the thigh.

She drew back skittishly, but not without a certain coyness. Which was all right with me. I wanted only to avoid a problem — Mrs. Olmstead — not to walk into another one. But Kay had her wants as well as I. And to get one must give. So when she said that she had to go to her room for a moment but would be right back, I told her I would count on it.

“I’ll hold your place for you,” I promised. “I’ll also move over on the bed, in case you want to sit down, in case you cannot think of a more comfortable position than sitting.”

Well.

When we heard Mrs. Olmstead return an hour later, we were locked together as the blissful beast-with-two-heads. We sprang apart, and she trotted into the bathroom ahead of me, her white uniform drawn high upon her sweet nakedness. I used the sink, while she sat on the toilet, tinkling pleasantly. And then I went over to her and hugged her red head against my stomach, and she nuzzled and kissed its environs in unashamed womanliness.

I congratulated myself.

For once, Britton Rainstar, I thought, you bridged a puddle without putting your foot down in stinky stuff. You’ve closed the door to debates on Mrs. Olmstead. Without compromising yourself, you’ve had a nice time and given same to a very nice young lady.

That’s what I thought — and why not?

I nourished that thought, while I returned to bed and Kay went downstairs to prepare my dinner. It began to glimmer away, due to a kind of bashful shyness of manner as she served said dinner to me. And at bedtime, when she came into my room in an old-fashioned, unrevealing flannel, lips trembling, eyes downcast, a pastel symphony of embarrassment — bingo. The sound was the sound of my comforting thought leaping out the window.

But I didn’t think of that then. All I could think of was drawing her down into my arms and holding her tight and trying to pet away her sadness.

“You won’t like me anymore, now,” she sobbed brokenheartedly. “You think I’m awful, now. You think I’m not a nice girl, now…” And so on, until I thought my heart was breaking, too.

“Please, please don’t cry, darling,” I pleaded. “Please don’t, baby girl. Of course I like you. Of course I think you’re a nice girl. Of course I think — I don’t think you’re awful.”

But she continued to weep and sob. Oh, she didn’t blame me. Not for a moment! She knew I was married, so it was all her fault. But men never did like you afterwards. There was this intern, and she’d liked him a lot and he’d kept after her, and finally she’d done it with him. And he’d told everyone in this hospital that she did it, and they’d all laughed and thought she was awful. Then there was this obstetrician she d worked for, a wonderfully sweet, considerate man — but after she did it with him a while, he must have thought she was awful (and not very nice, either) because he decided not to get a divorce after all. Then there was this—

“Well, pee on all of them!” I broke in. “Doing it is one of the very nicest things girls do, and any guy who wouldn’t treat her nice afterwards would doubtless eat dog hockey in Hammacher Schlemmer’s side window.”

She giggled, then sniffled and giggled simultaneously. She asked if she could ask me something, and then she asked it.

“Would you — I know you can’t, because you’re already married — but would you, if you weren’t? I mean, you wouldn’t think I was too awful to marry, just because I did it?”

“You asked me something, my precious love pot,” I said, “so let me tell you something. If I was not married — and please note that I use the verb ‘was,’ not were,’ since ‘were’ connotes the wildly impractical or impossible, as in ‘If I were you,’ and no one but a pretentious damned fool would say, ‘If I were not married’ because that’s not only possible but, in my case, a lousy actuality. But, uh, what was the question?”

“Would you marry me if you were not — I mean, was not — already married?”

“The answer is absotively, and, look, dear. ‘Were’ is proper when prefixed by the pronoun ‘you.’ That’s one of those exceptions—”

“You really would, Britt? Honestly? You wouldn’t think I was too awful to marry?”

“Let me put it this way, my dearest dear,” I said. “I would not only marry you, and consider myself the luckiest and most honored of men, but after God’s blessing had been called down upon our union and the minister had given me permission to raise your bridal veil, I would raise your bridal gown instead, and I would shower kisses of gratitude all over your cute little butt.”

She heaved a great shuddery sigh. Then, her head resting cozily against my chest, she asked had I really meant what I had said.

“My God,” I said indignantly, “would I make such a statement if I didn’t mean it?”

“I mean, honest and truly.”

“Oh,” I said. “So that’s what you mean.”

“Uh-huh.”

“I cannot tell a lie,” I said. “Thus, my answer must be, yes: honest and truly, and a pail of wild honey with brown sugar on it.”

She fell asleep in my arms, the untroubled sleep of an innocent child; and flights of angels must have guided her into it, for her smile was the smile of heaven’s own.

I brushed my lips against her hair, thinking that everyone should know such peace and happiness. Wondering why they didn’t when it was so easily managed. The ingredients were to be found in everyone’s cupboard, or the cupboard which everyone is, and you could put them together as easily as you could button your britches. All that was necessary was to combine any good brand of kindness and any standard type of goodwill, plus a generous dab of love; then, shake well and serve. There you had peace and happiness — beautifully personified by this sleeping angel in my arms.

Without disturbing her, I shifted my position ever so slightly, and I took another look at her.

And I thought: I have seen Manny sleep like this, too. Manny, who thus far has done everything but kill me and doubtless plans to do just that.

Then, I thought: Connie looked thus also, for God’s sake! The homeliest, scrawniest broad in the world has at least a moment of surpassing beauty, else a majority of the world’s female population would go unscrewed and unmarried. And I thought that Connie would probably like to kill me, and quite likely would do so if she knew how to safely wangle it.

And I thought: And how about Kay, this lovely child? For all I know about her — or DON’T know about her — she, too, could have my murder on her mind. Yea, verily, even while screwing me, she could be plotting my slaughter. Perhaps she would see my death as atonement for her misuse by guys who had used her. Guys who thought she was awful and not a nice girl just because she did it.

Finally, in that prescient moment preceding sleep, I thought: Congratulations, Rainstar. You have done it again. A very small puddle was in your path, one that you could have walked through without dampening your shoe soles. Yet you shrank — you chronic shrinker! — from even that small hazard. You must spring over the literal wet spot in your walkway, and that mess you came down in on the other side was definitely not a beehive.

Manny came out to the house the next day.

She looked very beautiful. Her illness has left her even lovelier than she had been, and… But I believe we’ve already covered that. So let us move on.

I was naturally pretty wary, and she also was on guard. We exchanged greetings stiffishly, and moved on to a stilted exchange of conversational banalities. With that behind us, I think we were on the point of breaking the ice when Kay popped in with the coffee service. She declared brightly that she just knew that we two convalescents would feel better after a good cup of coffee, and she poured and passed a cup to each of us.

Manny barely tasted hers, and said it was very good.

I tasted mine, and also lied about it.

Kay said she would just wait until we finished it, by which time doubtless, since I was not feeling very well, Miss Aloe would want to leave. Manny promptly put her cup down, and stood up.

“I’ll leave right now, Britt. It was thoughtless of me to come out so soon, so—”

“Sit down,” I said. “I am quite well, and I’m sure that neither of us wants any more of this coffee. So please remove it, Miss Nolton, and leave Miss Aloe and me to conduct our business in private.”

Manny said timidly that she would be glad to come back another time. But I told her again to sit down, and she sat. Kay snatched up the coffee things and dumped to the door. She turned around there, addressing me with sorrowful reproach.

“I was just doing my job, Mr. Rainstar. I’m responsible for your health, you know.”

“I know,” I said, “and I’m grateful.”

“It would be easier for me if I wasn’t so conscientious. My salary would be the same, and it would be a lot easier for me, if I didn’t do—”

“I’d better leave,” said Manny, picking up her purse.

“And I think you’d better not!” I said. “I think Miss Nolton had better leave — right this minute!”

Kay left, slamming the door behind her. I smiled apologetically at Manny.

“I’m sorry,” I said. “She’s a very nice young woman, and she’s very good at her job. But sometimes…”

“Mmm. I’ll just bet she is!” Manny said, and then, with a small diffident gesture, “I want to tell you something, and it’s, well, not easy for me. Could you come a little closer, please?”

“Of course,” I said, and I moved over to her side on the love seat. I waited, and her lips parted, then closed again. And she looked at me helplessly, apparently unable to find the words for what she wanted to say.

I told her gently to take her time, we had all the time in the world; and then, by way of easing her tenseness, I asked her if she remembered the last time we had been in this room together.

“It was months ago, and I thought I’d lost the pamphlet-writing job before I even had it. So I was sitting here with my head in my hands, feeling sorry as hell for myself. And I wasn’t aware that you’d come into the room until—”

“Of course, I remember!” She clapped her hands delightedly. “You looked like this—” She puffed her cheeks out and rolled her eyes inward in a hilarious caricature of despair. “That’s just the way you looked, darling. And then I said…”

“Lo, the poor Indian.”

“Lo, the poor Indian,” she chimed in unison.

We laughed and smiled at each other. She took my month’s retainer from her purse and gave it to me, and we went on smiling at one another. And she spoke to me in a voice as soft and tender as her smile.

“Poor Lo. How are you, my dearest darling?”

“Well, you know” — I shrugged — “for a guy who’s been shot out of the saddle a few times, not bad, not bad at all.”

“I’m sorry, Britt. Terribly, terribly sorry. That’s what I was trying to tell you. I haven’t been myself. At least, I hope the self I’ve been showing wasn’t the real Manuela Aloe, but I’m going to be all right now. I–I—”

“Of course, you’re going to be all right,” I said. “I pulled a lousy trick on you, and you paid me off for it. So now we’re all even Stephen.”

“Nothing more will happen to you, Britt! I swear it won’t!”

“Didn’t I just say so?” I said. “Now, be a nice girl and say no more about it, and start reading these beautiful words I’ve written for you.”

She said, “All right, Britt,” swallowing heavily, eyes shining too brightly. Then the tears brimmed over, and she began to weep silently, and I hastily looked away. Because I’d never known what to do when a woman started crying, and I particularly didn’t know what to do when the woman was Manny.

“Aah, Britt,” she said tremulously. “How could I ever have been mean to anyone as nice as you?”

“Doggone it, everyone keeps asking me that!” I said. “And what the heck can I tell them?”

She laughed tearily. She said, “Britt, oh, Britt, my darling!” and then she broke down completely, great sobs tearing through her body.

I held her and patted her head, and that sort of thing. I took out my breast-pocket handkerchief and dabbed her eyes, and honked her nose in it. Conscious that there was something a little nutty about performing such chores for a girl who had almost killed me, even though she hadn’t meant to. Conscious that I again might be playing the chump, and, at the moment, not really caring if I was.

I crossed to my desk, and began putting the pages I had written into an envelope. I took my time about it, giving her time to pull herself together. Rattling on with some backhanded kidding to brighten things up.

“Now, hear me,” I said. “I don’t want you looking like this — bawling and honking your schnozzle and being so disgustingly messy. Us Noble Redmen don’t put up with such white-eye tricks, get me, you silly squaw?”

“G-gotcha…” A small and shaky snicker. “Silly squaw always gets Noble Redman.”

“Well, I just hope you’re not speaking with a forked tongue,” I said. “These are very precious words, lovingly typed on top-grade erasable-bond paper, and God pity you if you louse them up.”

“All right, Britt…”

She did sound like she was, so I turned back around. I helped her up from the love seat, gave her a small pat on the bottom, and pressed the envelope into her hands. As I walked her to the front door, I told her a little about the manuscript and said that I would look forward to hearing from her about it. She said that I would, no later than the day after the morrow.

“No, wait a minute,” she said. “Today’s Friday, isn’t it?”

“All day, I believe.”

“Let’s make it Monday, then. I’ll see you Monday.”

“No one should ever see anyone on Monday,” I said. “Let’s make it Tuesday.”

We settled on a Tuesday p.m. meeting. Pausing at the front door, she glanced out to where her own car stood in the driveway and asked what had happened to mine. “I hope the company hasn’t pulled another boo-boo and come out and gotten it, Britt. After all the stupid mix-ups we’ve had in the past, that would be a little too much.”

“No, no,” I said. “Everything is as it should be. I believe that exposure to the elements is good for a car, helps it to grow strong and tough, you know. But since I haven’t been using it these several weeks, I locked it up in the garage.”

“Yes?” She looked up at me curiously. “But you get out a little bit, don’t you? You don’t stay in the house all the time?”

“That’s what I do,” I said. “Doctor’s orders. I think it’s pretty extreme, but…” I shrugged, leaving the sentence unfinished.

Again, she gave me a curious frown. “Very strange,” she murmured, a slight chill coming into her voice. “I was certain that the doctors would want you to get a little fresh air and sunshine.”

I said that, Oh, well, she knew how doctors were, knowing that it sounded pretty feeble. Actually, of course, it was not the doctors but Claggett who had absolutely forbidden me to leave the house.

Manny said, Yes, she did know how doctors were. “I’ll say good-bye here, then. I wouldn’t want you to go against orders by walking to my car with me.”

“Oh, now, wait a minute,” I said, taking a quick look over my shoulder. “Of course I’ll walk to the car with you.”

I tucked her arm through mine, and we crossed the porch and started down the steps.

We descended to the driveway and sauntered the few steps to her car. I helped her into it and closed the door quietly.

Mrs. Olmstead was out shopping per usual, so she could not reveal my sneaking out of the house. But I was fearful that Kay might spot me, and come storming out to yank me back inside again.

“Well, good-bye, darling,” I said, and I stooped and hastily kissed Manny. “Take care, and I’ll see you Tuesday.”

“Wait, Britt. Please!”

“Yes?” I threw another quick glance over my shoulder. “I love being with you, dear, but I really shouldn’t be standing out here.”

“It’s just me, isn’t it? You’re afraid of being here with me.”

“Dammit, no,” I said. “That isn’t it at all. It’s just that, I—”

“I told you nothing more would happen to you, Britt. I’m all right now, and there’ll never be anything like that again, and — Don’t you believe me?”

Her voice broke and she turned her head quickly, looking at the scantily populated countryside across the road. There were a few houses scattered over a wide area, and land had been graded for a number of others. But everything had come to a halt with the advent of the garbage dump on former Rainstar property.

“Manny,” I said. “Listen to me. Please listen to me, Manny.”

“Well?” She faced me again, but slowly, her gaze still lingering on the near-empty expanse beyond the road, seeming to search for something there. “Yes, Britt?”

“I’m not afraid of being here with you at all. You said that nothing more would happen to me, and I believe you. It’s just that I’m supposed to stay in the house — not to come outside at all. And I’m afraid there’ll be a hell of a brouhaha if—”

“But you’ve been going out.” Manny smiled at me thinly. “You’ve been going out and staying out for hours.”

“What?” I said. “Why do you say that?”

“Why?” she said. “Yes, why do I? I’ve certainly no right to make an issue of it.”

And before I could say anything more, she nodded coldly and drove away.

I looked after her as her car sped down the driveway and turned into the road, became lost in the dust of the ubiquitous dump trucks wending their way toward the garbage hummocks.

I turned away, vaguely troubled, and moved absently toward the porch.

I went up the steps, still discomfited and puzzled by Manny’s attitude, but grateful that Kay had not discovered me in my fracture of a strict order. One of the few unhappy aspects of sex is that it places you much too close physically while you are still mentally poles apart. So that a categorical imperative is apt to be juxtaposed with a constitutional impossibility, for how can one kick some one — or part of some one — that he has laved with love.

I couldn’t face up to the consequences of Kay Nolton’s throwing her weight around with me again. No sadist I, I could not slug the provably and delightfully screwable.

I reached the top step, and—

There was a sudden angry sound at my ear, the buzz of a maddened hornet The hornet zoomed in and stung me painfully on the forehead, the sting burning like acid.

I slapped at it, then rubbed the tortured flesh with my fingers. As a boy, growing up on the old place, I had been “hit” by hornets many times. But I could remember none having the effect of this one.

It was numbing, almost as if I had been hit by an instrument that was at once edged and blunt. I felt a little dizzy and faint, and—

I took my hand away from my head.

I stared at it stupidly.

It was red and wet, dripping with blood, and more blood was dripping down onto the age-faded wood of the porch.

My knees buckled slowly, and I sank down to them. My eyes closed, and I slowly toppled over and lay prone.

My last thought, before I lost consciousness, was of Manny. Her indirect insistence that I accompany her to her car. The hurt in her voice and her eyes when I had hesitated about leaving the safety of the house — hurt which I could only expunge by doing what I had been sternly ordered not to do.

So I had done as she wanted because I loved her and believed in her.

And then, loving and trusting her, I had remained out in the open, exposed to the danger which is always latent in loving and trusting.

I had lingered at the side of her car, pleading with her. And she had sat with her back turned to me, her gaze searching the landscape, apparently searching it for…? A signal? A rifle, say, with a telescopic sight.

I heard myself laugh, even as the very last of my consciousness glimmered away. Because, you see, it was really terribly funny. Almost as funny as it was sad.

I had always shunned guns, always maintaining that guns had been known to kill people and even defenseless animals, and that those who fooled around with guns had holes in their heads. And now, I… I… I had been… and I had a hole in my…

When I came back into my consciousness, I was lying on my own bed, and Kay was hunkered down at the bedside, staring anxiously into my face.

I started to rear up, but she pressed me back upon the pillows. I stammered nonsensically, “What… why… where… how… and then the jumble in my mind cleared, and I said, “How did I get up here? Who brought me up?”

“Shhh,” said Kay. “I — we made it together, remember? With me steering you, and hanging on to you for dear life.”

“Mrs. Olmstead helped you. I wouldn’t have thought the old gal had it in her.”

“Mrs. Olmstead isn’t back yet. She’s never around when you need her for anything. Now, will you just shut up for goodness’ sake, and tell me how — Doggone it, anyway!” Kay scowled, her voice rising angrily. “It’s just too darned much! I have to follow that woman around, do everything over after she’s done it! I have to watch you every minute to keep you from doing something silly, and all I get is bawled out for it! I have to—”

“Oh, come on now,” I said, “it really isn’t that bad, is it?”

“Yes, it is! And now you’ve made me lose control of myself and act as crazy as you are! Now, you listen to me, Britt Rainstar! Are you listening?”

She was trembling with fury, her face an unrelieved white against the contrasting red of her hair. I tried to take her hand, and she knocked it away. Then she quickly recovered it and squeezed it, smiling at me determinedly through gritted teeth.

“I asked you if you were — Oh, the heck with it,” she said. “How are you feeling, honey?”

“Tol’able, ma’am,” I said. “Tolerable. How are you?”

She said she was darned mad, that’s how she was. Then she told me to hold still, dam it, and she tested the strip of adhesive bandage on my forehead. And then she leaned down and gently kissed it.

“Does it hurt very much, Britt?”

“You wouldn’t ask that if you were really a nurse.”

“What? What do you mean by that?”

“Anyone with the slightest smattering of medical knowledge knows that when you kiss something you make it well.”

“Ha!” She brushed her lips against mine. “You were told not to leave this house, Britt. Not under any circumstances. Why did you do it?”

“It wasn’t really going out,” I said. “I just saw Miss Aloe to her car.”

“And you got shot.”

“But there was no connection between the two events. She’d been gone for, oh, a couple of minutes when it happened.”

“What does that prove?”

“I’m sure she had nothing to do with it,” I said stubbornly. “She told me she was sorry for what she’d done, and she swore that there’d be no more trouble. And she was telling the truth! I know she was, Kay.”

“And I know you got shot,” Kay said. “I also know that I’ll get blamed for it. It’s not my fault. You practically threw me out of your office, and told me to leave you alone. I was only t-trying to look after you, b-but you—”

I cut in on her, telling her to listen to me and listen good. And when she persisted, obviously working herself up to a tear storm, I took her by the shoulders and shook her.

“Don’t you pull that on me!” I said. “Don’t pretend that that little stunt you pulled down in my office was an attempt to protect me. You were just being nosy. Acting like a jealous wife. Miss Aloe and I were discussing business, and—”

“Ha! I know her kind of business. She’s got her business right in her — Well, never mind. I won’t say it.”

She dropped her eyes, blushing. I stared at her grimly, and finally she looked up and asked me what I looking at.

“At you,” I said. “What’s with this blushing bit? I think it’s just about impossible for you to be embarrassed. I don’t think you’d be embarrassed if you rode naked through Coventry on a Kiddy-Kar with a bull’s-eye on each titty and a feather duster up your arse! You’ve repeatedly proved that you’re shameless, goddammit, yet you go around kicking shit, and turning red as a billy goat’s butt every time you see the letter p. You—”

“Oops!” said Kay. “Whoops!” And she lost her balance and went over backwards, sitting down on the floor with a thud. She sat thus, shaking and trembling, her hands covering her face, making rather strange and fearful sounds.

“What’s the matter?” I said. “Are you throwing a fit? That’s all I need, by God, a blushing fit-thrower!”

And her hands came away from her face, they were literally exploded, as she burst into wild peals of laughter. The force of it made me wince, but it was somehow contagious. I started laughing, too, laughing harder at each new blast from her. And the harder I laughed, the harder she laughed.

That kind of laughter does something to some people, and it did it to her. She staggered to her feet, trying to get to the bathroom, but she just couldn’t make it. Instead, she fell down across me, now crying from laughing so much, and I took her by her wet seat, and hauled her over to my other side.

“You dirty girl,” I said. “Why don’t you carry a cork with you?”

“D-don’t,” she begged. “Please d-don’t…”

I didn’t; that is, I didn’t say anything more. For practically anything will start a person up again when he has passed a certain point in laughing.

We lay quiet together, with the only sound the sound of our breathing.

After a long time, she sighed luxuriously and asked if I really minded her blushing, and I said I supposed there were worse things.

“I don’t know why I do it, Britt, but I always have. I’ve tried not to, but it just makes it worse.”

“I used to know a girl who was that way,” I said. “But an old gypsy cured her of it.”

I told her how it was done. Following the old gypsy’s instructions, she sprinkled salt on a sparrow’s tail when it was looking the other way. When the sparrow flew off, it took her blushes with her.

“Just like that?” Kay said. “She didn’t blush anymore?”

“No, but it started a blushing epidemic among the sparrows. For years, before they lost their shame by do-doing on people, the midnight sky was brilliant with their blushes, and—”

“Darn you!” An incipient trembling of the bed. “You shut up!”

I said quickly that we should both think of something unpleasant. Something that definitely was not a laughing matter. And it was no trouble at all to think of such a something.

“I’m gonna catch holy heck,” Kay said solemnly. “Boy, oh boy, am I gonna catch it.”

“You mean, Fm going to catch it,” I said. “I was the one that got shot.”

“But I let you. I didn’t stop you from going outside.”

“Stop me? How the hell could you stop me? I’m a grown man, and if I wanted to go outside, I’d go, regardless of what you said or did.”

“You’ll see,” Kay said. “Sergeant Claggett will hold me responsible. He’s already said he would.”

I couldn’t talk her out of her qualms, nor did I try to very hard. I was the one who had goofed — and I would hear from Claggett about that! — but she would be held responsible. He would have her yanked off the job, possibly even fired.

“Look, Kay,” I said. “We don’t know that I was actually shot. We don’t know anything of the kind, now, do we?”

Kay said that of course we knew it. At least, she did. That crease across my temple had been put there by a bullet.

“Now, we don’t know,” she added thoughtfully, “that anyone was actually trying to hit you. That it was a professional, say, which it would just about have to be, wouldn’t it, if the shooting was intentional?”

“Why, that’s right!” I said. “And a pro wouldn’t have just creased me. He’d have put one through my head. I’ll bet it was an accident, Kay. Some character hunting rabbits across the road, or — or else—” I broke off, remembering the other things that had happened to me.

“Or else what, Britt?”

“He wasn’t trying to kill me or seriously injure me. Just to give me a bad jolt.”

“Oh,” said Kay slowly. “Oh, yes. I guess you’re probably right. I guess your darling little Miss Aloe was lying when she promised not to give you any more trouble.”

I snapped that Manny hadn’t been lying — something that I was by no means sure of, much as I wanted to be. Kay shrugged that of course I knew more about my business than she did. So who was responsible for the shooting, if Manny was not?

“I thought she was the only one you and Sergeant Claggett suspected. Of giving you such a bad time, I mean. I guess you did say that her uncle might be involved, but you really didn’t seem to believe it.”

“Didn’t and don’t,” I said curtly. “That was just a far-out possibility.”

“Well, just don’t you worry your sweet tinted-gray head about it,” said Kay. “I imagine that Miss Aloe just forgot that she’d ordered someone to take a shot at you. I’ll bet that now she remembers doing it, she’s just as sorry as she can be.”

I said something that sounded like “ship” but wasn’t. Kay said brightly that she’d just thought of another explanation for the shooting. Manny had ordered it, and then ordered it canceled. But the gunman had forgotten the cancellation.

“That’s probably what happened, Britt, don’t you think so? Of course, you’d think a professional gunman would be a little more careful, but, oh well, that’s life.”

“That’s life,” I said, “and this is my hand. And if you don’t stop needling me, dammit…!”

“I’m sorry, darling. It just about had to be an accident, didn’t it? A stray bullet from a hunter’s gun.”

“Well…” I hesitated.

“Right,” said Kay. “So there’s no reason to tell Sergeant Claggett that you were ever outside the house. He’d just get all upset and mad, and maybe take me away from you, and, oh boy,” sighed Kay. “Am I glad to get that settled! Let’s go to the bathroom, shall we?”

We went to the bathroom.

We got out of our clothes and washed, and helped each other wash, and Kay carefully removed the adhesive strip and examined my head wound.

“Mmm-hmm. It doesn’t look so bad, Britt. How does it feel?”

“No problem. A very slight itching and stinging occasionally.”

“Well, we’ll leave it unbandaged for the time being. Let the air get to it. Have you felt any more faintness?”

“Nope. Not the faintest.”

She lowered the toilet seat, and told me to sit down on it. I did, and she took my pulse while resting a palm on my forehead. Then—

The bathroom suddenly began to shake. There was a sudden ominous creaking and cracking, slowly mounting in volume.

Kay pitched sideways, and her mouth opened to scream. I laughed, grabbed her, and pulled her down on my lap.

“It’s all right,” I said, “don’t be afraid. I’ve been through the same thing a dozen times. There’s a lot of shaking and trembling, and some of the damnedest racket you ever heard, but…

I tightened my grip on her, for the shaking was already pretty violent. And the noise was so bad that I was virtually yelling at her.

The house was “settling,” I explained. Something it had done sporadically for decades. The phenomenon was due to aging and exceptionally heavy building materials, and, possibly, to deep subterranean springs which lay beneath the structure. But frightening as it was to anyone unaccustomed to it, there was absolutely no danger. In a few minutes it would all be over.

The few minutes were actually more than ten. Kay sat with her arms wound around my neck, hanging on so tightly at times that I was almost strangled. It was not a bad way to go, though, if one had to, being hugged to death by a girl who was not only very pretty but also very naked. And I held her nakedness to mine, as enthusiastically as she held mine to hers.

It was so pleasant, in fact, that neither of us was in any hurry to let go even after the noise and the trembling had ceased.

I patted her on the flank and said she wiggled very good. She whispered naughtily in my ear — something which I shall not repeat — and then she blushed violently. And I even blushed a little myself.

I was trying to think of some suitable or, rather, unsuitable reply, when she let out a startled gasp.

“Oh, my God, Britt” — she pointed a trembling finger — “I-look!”

I looked. And laughed. “It’s all right,” I said, giving her another flank spank. “It always does that.”

“В-but the doorknob turned! It’s still turning.”

“I know. I imagine every other doorknob in the place is doing the same thing. As I understand it, the house undergoes a kind of winding-up during the settling process. Then when the tension is relieved, there’s a general relaxing or unwinding, and you see such things as doors flying open or their knobs turning.”

Kay said, Whew, brushing imaginary perspiration from her brow.

“It scared me to death, Britt! Really!”

“No, it didn’t, Kay,” I said. “Really!”

“Well, I sure wouldn’t want to be alone when it happened. You see the knob turn, and — How do you know someone’s not there?”

“Very simply,” I said. “If someone’s there, he just opens the door and comes in.”

The door opened, and Sergeant Claggett came in.

He stood frozen in his tracks for a moment, blinking at us incredulously. Then he said, “Excuse me!” retreating across the threshold with a hasty back-step.

“Excuse me for not getting up,” I said.

“I want to see you downstairs, Britt!” He spoke with his head turned. “Immediately, understand?”

“Of course,” I said. “Just as soon as I get something in — on.”

“And you, too.” He addressed Kay without looking at her. “I want to see you, too, Officer Nolton!”

I suppose I should have seen the truth from the start. Almost any fool would have, I am sure, so that should have qualified me for seeing it I hadn’t because I am a plain, garden variety of fool, not the devious kind. I am a worshipper at the shrine of laissez faire, a devotee of the status quo. I accept things as they are, for what they are, without proof or documentation. I ask no more than a quid pro quo. And failing to get a fair exchange, I will normally accept the less that is offered. In a word, I am about as undevious as one can be. And having no talent nor liking for deception, I am easily deceived. As per the present instance.

Claggett wanted me to have round-the-clock protection. Which is not easily managed by a mere detective sergeant in an undermanned, tightly budgeted police department. He didn’t want me to know that I had such protection, believing that I would inadvertently reveal it where it was best not revealed. So the cop he planted on me was also a nurse, someone whose presence in the house would be taken for granted. And since she was a nurse, he could have her wages paid by PXA’s insurers, thus quieting any objections from the PD.

Naive as I was, I would still ask myself why a nurse would take such a potentially dangerous job. Claggett had provided the answer by making it appear that there was something wrong with her, or that there could be something wrong with her. That not only satisfied my curiosity as to why she was taking the job, but it would also — he hoped — make me wary of her. I would shy away from any personal involvement with her, and she would not be distracted from her duties as a cop.

Well, the deception had worked fine, up to a point. A cop had been planted on me, and I had no idea that she was a cop. Doubts about her good intentions had been planted in my mind, and I did my damnedest to hold her in distance. Why then had I wound up in bed with her? How could she have been so outrageously derelict in her duty?

Claggett swore savagely that it was too damned much for him.

I said, somewhat uncomfortably, that he seemed to be making too much of a much over the matter. “After all, it’s Friday afternoon, Jeff. Everyone relaxes and lets down a bit on Friday afternoon.”

“Everyone doesn’t have a nut after him,” snapped Claggett. “A screwed-up broad who’s been snatching his scalp by bits and pieces, and just may decide she wants his life along with it!”

“Now, Jeff,” I said. “I’m practically convinced that Manny—”

“Shut up,” Claggett said, and turned coldly to Kay. “I don’t believe you were wearing a gun when I arrived today. What do regulations say about that?”

“I’m sorry, sir. I—”

“You’re a disgrace!” said Claggett, cutting me off again before I was able to say anything effective. “I found the door unlocked, and standing wide open! And you naked and unarmed with the man you were supposedly protecting!”

“Y-yes, sir. I’m thoroughly ashamed, sir, and I swear it won’t happen again!”

“No, it won’t. You’re suspended from duty, as of this moment, and you’ll be up before the disciplinary board just as soon as I can arrange it!”

Kay wasn’t blushing anymore. She was apparently fresh out of blushes, and she was very pale as she got to her feet. “Whatever you say, Sergeant. I’ll start getting my things together.”

Claggett brought her back to her chair with a roar. “You, Officer Nolton, will remain in this room until you are told to do otherwise. As for you, Britt” — he gave me a look of weary distaste — “I’ve been trying to help you, and I’ve gone to considerable lengths to do it. Much further than I should have, in fact. Do you think this was the right way to repay me?”

“Of course I don’t, since you obviously consider it wrong, and it’s caused problems for Miss Nolton. I myself don’t feel that it was wrong per se but there’s a variable factor involved. I mean, something is good only so long as it doesn’t make others unhappy.”

“Hmmm,” he said, his blue eyes brooding. “Well! I do feel that you’ve let me down, but that doesn’t excuse Officer Nolton. If—”

“It should. Let’s face it, Jeff,” I said. “I’m quite a bit older than Miss Nolton — also a lot more experienced. And I’m afraid I was persistent with her to a shameful degree. Please don’t blame her, Jeff. It really was all my fault.”

Claggett’s brows went up.

He grimaced, lips pursed, then turned an enigmatic gaze on Kay. “How about it, Nolton? Is that the way it was?”

“Well, I am much younger than—” She broke off, sat very erect and dignified. “I wouldn’t care to say, sir!”

Claggett ran a hand over his mouth. He looked at Kay a moment or two longer, apparently seeing something in her of great interest, then faced back around to me. “You started to say something about Miss Aloe. Anything important?”

“I think so. She was out here to the house today, and she apologized for what she’d done. Implied that she hadn’t been rational or responsible for her actions.”

“And?”

“She promised not to make any more trouble — got pretty emotional about it. I’m convinced that she meant it, Jeff.”

“Well, I’m not,” said Kay; and here came that pretty blush again. “I’m sorry, Sergeant. I didn’t mean to butt in, but I’ve observed Miss Aloe very carefully and I thought you’d want my opinion as a police officer.”

“I do,” said Claggett. “In detail, please.”

“She’s just a snippy, snotty little dip, that’s what!”

Claggett’s interest in her seemed to increase tremendously. He would shift his fascinated gaze away from her; then, as though against his will, it would slowly move back and fasten on her again. Meanwhile, he was saying that he had undergone a complete change of mind, and that she should by all means remain on her present duty.

“Oh, thank you, Sergeant!” She smiled on him brilliantly. “I know you were kind of disappointed about… but it won’t happen again, sir!”

“Ah, well,” said Claggett easily. “A pretty young girl and a handsome, sophisticated older man — how could I blame you for succumbing? And what’s to blame, anyway? Just don’t forget you’ve got business here, too.”

“Yes, sir! I won’t get caught with my — I’ll remember, sir!”

“Good.” Claggett beamed. “I’m sure you mean that, and it wouldn’t be practical to pull you off the job, anyway. Not with so short a time to go.”

“Uh, sir?”

“I mean, we should know how things stand with Miss Aloe very soon. If she’s going to pull anything, she’ll do it within the next week or so, don’t you think?”

“Well…” Kay hesitated doubtfully. “Why do you say that, sir?”

“Because she’s a very pretty girl, too,” Claggett said, “and pretty girls have a way of being jealous of other girls. If she still cares enough for Mr. Rainstar to be mad at him, she’ll try to stop him having fun with you. And she won’t waste time about it.”

Kay said, “Well, yes, sir. Maybe.” But rather doubtfully. Not exactly sure that she had been complimented.

Claggett said he was glad she agreed with him. And he was glad to be glad, he said, because he was really pretty sad when he thought of her imminent resignation from the police department.

“Just as soon as you’ve finished this assignment. Of course,” he went on, “I realize it’s the smart thing for you to do, a girl who’s shown an aptitude for so many things in such a short span of time. Let’s see. You’ve been a nurse, a secretary, an airline stewardess, a — Yes, Officer Nolton?”

“I said, you can have my resignation right now if you want it! And you know what you can do with it, too!”

“Well, sure, sure,” Claggett said heartily. “For that matter, I could have you kicked out on your ass. For stated reasons that would make it hard for you to get a job washing towels in a whorehouse. Well?” He paused. “Do you want me to do that?”

Kay muttered something under her breath.

Claggett leaned forward. “I didn’t hear you! Speak up!”

“I…” Kay wet her lips. “No, sir. I don’t want you to.”

“Don’t want me to do what?”

“Don’t!” I said. “For God’s sake, drop it, Jeff.”

He gestured curtly, ordering me to butt out. To mind my own business and let him mind his. I said I couldn’t do that.

“You’ve made your point, Jeff. So let it go at that. You don’t need to watch her bleed.” I crossed over to Kay, spoke to her gently. “Want to go up to your room? It’ll be all right with the sergeant, won’t it, Jeff?”

“Yeah, hell, dammit!” he said sourly.

“Kay.” I touched her on the shoulder. “Want me to help you?”

She shook off my hand.

She buried her face in her hands, and began to shake with silent weeping.

Claggett and I exchanged a glance. He stood up, jerked his head toward the door, and went out. I took another glance at Kay, saw that her trembling had stopped and followed him.

We shook hands at the front door, and he apologized for coming down hard on Kay. But he seemed considerably less than overwhelmed with regret. The little lady had been under official scrutiny for a long time, he said, and her conduct today had simply triggered an already loaded gun.

“I’m not referring to catching her in the raw with you. I had to bawl her out for it, but that’s as far as it would have gone — if there’d been nothing more than that. It was her attitude about it, her attitude in general, the things she said. If you know what I mean.” He sighed, shook his head. “And if you don’t know, to hell with you.”

“I know,” I said. “But she was pretty upset, Jeff. If you’ll look at things from her viewpoint—”

“I won’t,” said Jeff. “You can be fair without seeing the other fellow’s side of things, Britt. Keep doing that, and you stop having a side of your own. You get so damned broad-minded that you don’t know right from wrong.”

I said that I didn’t always know now, and he said I should ask him whenever I was in doubt. “Incidentally, I spoke to a lawyer about the way you’d been gypped out of your property for that city dump, and he thinks you’ve got a hell of a good case. In fact, he’s willing to take it on a contingency for a third of what he can recover.”

“But I’ve told you,” I said, “I just can’t do it, Jeff. I’m simply not up to a courtroom battle.”

“My lawyer friend thinks they’d go for an out-of-court settlement.”

“Well, maybe,” I said. “But Connie would be sure to find out about it, and I’d still be up the creek. She’d grab any money I got, and give me a good smearing besides.”

“I don’t see that,” Claggett frowned. “You’ve been sending her quite a bit of money, haven’t you?”

“Better than four thousand since I got out of the hospital.”

“Then why should she want to give you a bad time? Why should she throw a wTench in a money machine? She hurts you, she hurts herself.”

I nodded, said he was probably right. But still…

“I’m just afraid to do it, Jeff. I don’t know why I am, but I am.”

He looked at me exasperatedly, and seemed on the point of saying something pointed. Instead, however, he sighed heavily and said he guessed I just couldn’t help it.

“But think it over, anyway, won’t you? You don’t need to commit yourself, but you can at least think about it, can’t you?”

“Oh, well, sure,” I said. “Sure, I’ll think about it.”

“That’s a promise?”

“Of course,” I said.

He left. I returned to Kay, who was well prepared to receive me.

“I could simply kill you!” she exploded. “You made me lose my job, you stupid old boob you!”

“I’m sorry,” I said. “But I’m sure you were much too good for it.”

“I was not! I mean — why didn’t you speak up for me? It was all your fault, anyway, but you didn’t say a word to defend me!”

“I thought I did, but possibly I didn’t say enough,” I said. “I really don’t think it would have changed anything, however, regardless of what I’d said.”

“Oh, you! What do you know, you silly old fool?”

“Very little,” I said. “And at the rate I’m aging, I’m afraid I won’t be able to add much to my store of knowledge.”

She glared at me, her face blotched and ugly like a soiled picture. She said angrily that I hadn’t needed to act like a fool, had I? Well, had I?

“You didn’t even give him time to open his mouth before you were cracking your silly jokes! Saying that I couldn’t wear my gun because it didn’t match my birthday suit, and a lot of other stupid, silly stuff. Well, you weren’t funny, not a doggone bit! Just a plain darned fool, that’s all you were!”

“I know,” I said.

“You know?”

“It’s a protective device.” I nodded. “The I-ain’t-nothin’-but-a-hound-dawg syndrome. When a dog can’t cope, he flops over on his back, thumps his tail, wiggles his paws, and exposes his balls. Briefly, he demonstrates that he is a harmless and amusing fellow, so why the hell should anyone hurt him? And it works pretty well with other dogs, literal and figurative. The meanest mastiff has never masticated me, but I’ve taken some plumb awful stompings from pussycats.”

“Huh! You think you’re so smart, don’t you?”

“Meow, sppftt,” I said.