As her tension built up, a warm calm settled on Adam.
“Sit there and grin,” she cried. “You think you’re free, don’t you? A few drinks and you think you’re a man! I could crook my little finger and you’d come back slobbering, crawling on your knees.” Her sense of power was loose and her vixen carefulness abandoned. “I know you,” she said. “I know your cowardly heart.”
Adam went on smiling. He tasted his drink, and that reminded her to pour another for herself. The bottle neck chattered against her glass.
“When I was hurt I needed you,” she said. “But you were slop. And when I didn’t need you any more you tried to stop me. Take that ugly smirk off your face.”
“I wonder what it is you hate so much.”
“You wonder, do you?” Her caution was almost entirely gone. “It isn’t hatred, it’s contempt. When I was a little girl I knew what stupid lying fools they were—my own mother and father pretending goodness. And they weren’t good. I knew them. I could make them do whatever I wanted. I could always make people do what I wanted. When I was half-grown I made a man kill himself. He pretended to be good too, and all he wanted was to go to bed with me—a little girl.”
“But you say he killed himself. He must have been very sorry about something.”
“He was a fool,” said Kate. “I heard him come to the door and beg. I laughed all night.”
Adam said, “I wouldn’t like to think I’d driven anybody out of the world.”
“You’re a fool too. I remember how they talked. ‘Isn’t she a pretty little thing, so sweet, so dainty?’ And no one knew me. I made them jump through hoops, and they never knew it.”
Adam drained his glass. He felt remote and inspective. He thought he could see her impulses crawling like ants and could read them. The sense of deep understanding that alcohol sometimes gives was on him. He said, “It doesn’t matter whether you liked Sam Hamilton. I found him wise. I remember he said one time that a woman who knows all about men usually knows one part very well and can’t conceive the other parts, but that doesn’t mean they aren’t there.”
“He was a liar and a hypocrite too.” Kate spat out her words. “That’s what I hate, the liars, and they’re all liars. That’s what it is. I love to show them up. I love to rub their noses in their own nastiness.”
Adam’s brows went up. “Do you mean that in the whole world there’s only evil and folly?”
“That’s exactly what I mean.”
“I don’t believe it,” Adam said quietly.
“You don’t believe it! You don’t believe it!” She mimicked him. “Would you like me to prove it?”
“You can’t,” he said.
She jumped up, ran to her desk, and brought the brown envelopes to the table. “Take a look at those,” she said.
“I don’t want to.”
“I’ll show you anyway.” She took out a photograph. “Look there. That’s a state senator. He thinks he’s going to run for Congress. Look at his fat stomach. He’s got bubs like a woman. He likes whips. That streak there—that’s a whip mark. Look at the expression on his face! He’s got a wife and four kids and he’s going to run for Congress. You don’t believe! Look at this! This piece of white blubber is a councilman; this big red Swede has a ranch out near Blanco. Look here! This is a professor at Berkeley. Comes all the way down here to have the toilet splashed in his face—professor of philosophy. And look at this! This is a minister of the Gospel, a little brother of Jesus. He used to burn a house down to get what he wanted. We give it to him now another way. See that lighted match under his skinny flank?”
“I don’t want to see these,” said Adam.
“Well, you have seen them. And you don’t believe it! I’ll have you begging to get in here. I’ll have you screaming at the moon.” She tried to force her will on him, and she saw that he was detached and free. Her rage congealed to poison. “No one has ever escaped,” she said softly. Her eyes were flat and cold but her fingernails were tearing at the upholstery of the chair, ripping and fraying the silk.
Adam sighed. “If I had those pictures and those men knew it, I wouldn’t think my life was very safe,” he said. “I guess one of those pictures could destroy a man’s whole life. Aren’t you in danger?”
“Do you think I’m a child?” she asked.
“Not any more,” said Adam. “I’m beginning to think you’re a twisted human—or no human at all.”
She smiled. “Maybe you’ve struck it,” she said. “Do you think I want to be human? Look at those pictures! I’d rather be a dog than a human. But I’m not a dog. I’m smarter than humans. Nobody can hurt me. Don’t worry about danger.” She waved at the filing cabinets. “I have a hundred beautiful pictures in there, and those men know that if anything should happen to me—anything—one hundred letters, each one with a picture, would be dropped in the mail, and each letter will go where it will do the most harm. No, they won’t hurt me.”
Adam asked, “But suppose you had an accident, or maybe a disease?”
“That wouldn’t make any difference,” she said. She leaned closer to him. “I’m going to tell you a secret none of those men knows. In a few years I’ll be going away. And when I do—those envelopes will be dropped in the mail anyway.” She leaned back in her chair, laughing.
Adam shivered. He looked closely at her. Her face and her laughter were childlike and innocent. He got up and poured himself another drink, a short drink. The bottle was nearly empty. “I know what you hate. You hate something in them you can’t understand. You don’t hate their evil. You hate the good in them you can’t get at. I wonder what you want, what final thing.”
“I’ll have all the money I need,” she said. “I’ll go to New York and I won’t be old. I’m not old. I’ll buy a house, a nice house in a nice neighborhood, and I’ll have nice servants. And first I will find a man, if he’s still alive, and very slowly and with the greatest attention to pain I will take his life away. If I do it well and carefully, he will go crazy before he dies.”
Adam stamped on the floor impatiently. “Nonsense,” he said. “This isn’t true. This is crazy. None of this is true. I don’t believe any of it.”
She said, “Do you remember when you first saw me?”
His face darkened. “Oh, Lord, yes!”
“You remember my broken jaw and my split lips and my missing teeth?”
“I remember. I don’t want to remember.”
“My pleasure will be to find the man who did that,” she said. “And after that—there will be other pleasures.”
“I have to go,” Adam said.
She said, “Don’t go, dear. Don’t go now, my love. My sheets are silk. I want you to feel those sheets against your skin.”
“You don’t mean that?”
“Oh, I do, my love. I do. You aren’t clever at love, but I can teach you. I will teach you.” She stood up unsteadily and laid her hand on his arm. Her face seemed fresh and young. Adam looked down at her hand and saw it wrinkled as a pale monkey’s paw. He moved away in revulsion.
She saw his gesture and understood it and her mouth hardened.
“I don’t understand,” he said. “I know, but I can’t believe. I know I won’t believe it in the morning. It will be a nightmare dream. But no, it—it can’t be a dream—no. Because I remember you are the mother of my boys. You haven’t asked about them. You are the mother of my sons.”
Kate put her elbows on her knees and cupped her hands under her chin so that her fingers covered her pointed ears. Her eyes were bright with triumph. Her voice was mockingly soft. “A fool always leaves an opening,” she said. “I discovered that when I was a child. I am the mother of your sons. Your sons? I am the mother, yes—but how do you know you are the father?”
Adam’s mouth dropped open. “Cathy, what do you mean?”
“My name is Kate,” she said. “Listen, my darling, and remember. How many times did I let you come near enough to me to have children?”
“You were hurt,” he said. “You were terribly hurt.”
“Once,” said Kate, “just once.”
“The pregnancy made you ill,” he protested. “It was hard on you.”
She smiled at him sweetly. “I wasn’t too hurt for your brother.”