Man on the run - By Charles Williams Page 0,22

some grass where the sleet was bouncing, and then she was fitting a key into a large glass door. There was a small foyer inside with a potted palm and two elevators. It was very quiet. One of the elevators was standing open. We got in and she pressed a button. When we got out, she took off the dark coat she was wearing, and mopped the water off the bare floor of the car. It didn’t show very much on the carpet in the corridors. We met no one. Then she was unlocking another door.

I had a confused impression of a large room with thousands of books and a gray rug and colored draperies, and then she was leading me into another room. There were more curtains, and a double bed, a king-sized double bed, and beyond it was the door to the bathroom. Even the bathroom was large. She led me into it. There was a glass-doored stall shower. She reached in and turned on the taps. I went on shaking. I tried to say something. She shook her head at me and pushed me into the shower. “Sit down,” she said.

I sat down with the hot water pouring over my head and shoulders. She took off my shoes. “Now can you stand?” she asked. I got to my feet. The water felt as if it were boiling, but I went right on shaking. She pealed off the topcoat and dropped it to the floor. Then the coat. I tried to unbutton the shirt, but she caught both sides of it and tore at it, spraying the buttons off. In a moment I was naked, standing on the wet clothes while steamy water sluiced down over me. “I’ll be back,” she said, and closed the sliding door.

My skin was dead white and drawn up in a thousand whorls and wrinkles like the pictures of fingerprints, and my teeth went right on chattering. The door slid back and she was holding a glass half full of whisky. I drank it.

“All right,” she said. “Out you come. If you collapse before you get in bed I’ll never be able to lift you.”

She handed me a towel and took one herself. It felt as if we were tearing my skin off. She led me into the bedroom. The bed was turned down. She pushed me into it and covered me. She went out and came back almost immediately with another drink. She held it to my lips. My teeth beat like castanets against the glass, but I managed to swallow the whisky.

“Poor Irish,” she said. She clicked off the light, leaving only the faint illumination from the doorway to the living room. Then I saw she was undressing. She tossed the sweater, skirt, and slip across a chair, and sat down to remove her stockings. The room began to swim in big circles. She tossed the last garment onto the chair and slid in beside me.

“This may help,” she said. She gathered my head against her breasts, and a long smooth thigh slid up and over my leg and entwined with it as she held me pressed to her in every place we could touch. “It’s just a chill. It’ll go away.”

I struggled against the blackness that was trying to engulf me.

“Easy, Irish,” she said soothingly. “Just go to sleep.”

The walls of the room swam by again. I tried to get my arms round her, but I went on shaking.

“You can’t,” she said gently. “You know you can’t.”

She was right. I couldn’t. I made one more futile grab at the edge of the precipice and then fell, and went on falling through darkness.

Six

It was like waking up in another world. I sat up and looked around, almost as stupidly as if I had a hangover. In spite of the oversized bed, it was a very feminine room. Some light sifted in through the pale rose curtains that covered the wall at my left. The rug was a soft ivory in color, and the sliding doors of the clothes closet were full-length mirrors. The bed itself had a satin-covered headboard, a gold spread folded down at the foot of it, and a Dacron comforter. At either side were small night tables that held matching rose-shaded lamps with ebony bases. On the one at my left there was a white telephone, and tossed carelessly across it a black eyeshade of nylon or silk with an elastic band. It was warm and very quiet