“This business of keeping her aboard, and finding a way to take her away with you. I fell off at one of those curves.”
“The instructions I’m going to give you right now will give you enough clue so you can climb back on.”
He listened with a total attention, and when I was through, he repeated the whole sequence flawlessly. He was a joy to work with.
“But can you make her do it?” he asked.
“The choice is going to look just fine to her.”
We saw her at dinner. A gala night. She came in late, sat alone at a table for two. She wore a dark blue sleeveless bodice in some glittering metallic thread, a lighter blue cummerbund, a white ankle-length skirt that draped handsomely to her walk. I saw her searching for me after she had ordered. We were fifty feet away. Her gaze swept across me, stopped, came back. She held the glance for a moment, and without expression, gave a single almost imperceptible nod. A little later I looked over and saw a thick-bodied tourist leaning on her table, bending over, talking to her. The dining room lights made a gleaming pattern on his sweaty bald head. She paid not the slightest attention to him. He was swaying slightly, in drunken persuasion. Finally she looked up at him as if suddenly noticing him. She motioned him closer. She put her hand on the nape of his neck, pulled him down, whispered into his ear. She whispered for perhaps ten seconds. He sprang back from her. She watched him calmly. He backed into a waiter, then he turned and went back to his table. He passed quite close to us. His color looked bad, his mouth hung open. His eyes had that glassiness of someone who had been given a quick little glimpse of hell and turned into a believer.
He sat and pushed the food around his plate and then went out.
When next I looked over, she was gone. She rapped on the inner door at precisely ten-thirty. She came in very quickly, dropped a little blue airlines bag and a big white purse onto my bed, then snugged herself into my arms, her arms locked around my waist, tightly. She was shivering, and I guessed it was half faked, half real. She kept herself pulled very firmly against me, and she whispered, “Darling, darling, darling. I’m safe now.”
I gently unwound her and stepped away. “You shouldn’t have packed anything.”
“But I know that. I didn’t! Don’t be cross with your Delly. I am yours now, dear. What I did was make some lightning purchases, inexpensive stuff, just the essentials, dear, and that little bag to hold what I couldn’t get into this purse. It’s new too. He knows all my clothes. He’s like that. He’s going to find everything there, my purse and identification things and my money, what I had left. All he’ll be able to find missing is my yellow checked jama shift, and he would have noticed that was laid out to sleep in. It’s in the blue bag, dear. He’ll see I didn’t even take the darling dress I bought out of the store wrappings, and he’ll know I was upset. I even left my dear little heart watch on the night stand. I made the bed look as if I tried to sleep. I left the note pinned to the pillow. I wrote it like you said, dear, about hearing on the radio about DeeDee and Tami and realizing why he was acting so strange. You have to lock the door with the key, so I had to leave it unlocked. So I folded the note and pinned it that way and wrote his name in big letters. And I said that I just couldn’t live with my conscience any more, after what we’d done. Oh, he’ll have no doubt! So here I am, all for you, without a dime, and just this outfit that I wouldn’t be caught dead in, usually. I bought it so I wouldn’t look like me at all. See? Short little green walking skirt, and this kind of dumb Fauntlery blouse and flats and little-girl stockings. Let me show you the full effect.”