“But he had meat,” Marty said. “I finished it off for him. And strawberries.”
“He must have come down and got those for himself. Always strawberries,” she said. “He’ll choke on them one of these days.”
Now Marty came to think of it, Whitehead had said something about his guest providing the meat.
“It was good, whatever it was,” he said.
“None of my doing,” Pearl said, offended as a wife discovering her husband’s adultery.
Marty put the conversation to rest; it was no use trying to raise her spirits when she was in this kind of mood.
The meal finished, he went up to Carys’ room. The house was pin-drop still: after the lethal farce of the previous night it had regained its composure. The pictures that lined the staircase, the carpets underfoot, all conspired against any rumor of distress. Chaos here was as unthinkable as a riot in an art gallery: all precedent forbade it.
He knocked on Carys’ door, lightly. There was no answer, so he knocked again, more loudly this time.
“Carys?”
Perhaps she didn’t want to speak to him. He’d never been able to predict from one day to the next whether they were lovers or enemies. Her ambiguities no longer distressed him, however. It was her way of testing him, he guessed, and it was fine by him as long as she finally admitted that she loved him more than any other fucker on the face of the earth.
He tried the handle; the door wasn’t locked. The room beyond was empty. Not only did it not contain Carys, it contained no trace of her existence there. Her books, her toiletries, her clothes, her ornaments, everything that marked out the room as hers had been removed. The sheets had been stripped from the bed, the pillowcases from the pillow. The bare mattress looked desolate.
Marty closed the door and started downstairs. He’d asked for explanations more than once and he’d been granted precious few. But this was too much. He wished to God Toy was still around: at least he’d treated Marty as a thinking animal.
Luther was back in the kitchen, his feet up on the table among a clutter of unwashed dishes. Pearl had clearly left her province to the barbarians.
“Where’s Carys?” was Marty’s first question.
“You never quit, do you?” Luther said. He stubbed out his cigarette on Marty’s lunch plate, and turned a page of his magazine.
Marty felt detonation approaching. He’d never liked Luther, but he’d taken months of sly remarks from the bastard because the system forbade the kind of response he really wanted to give. Now that system was crumbling, rapidly. Toy gone, dogs dead, heels on the kitchen table: who the hell cared any longer if he beat Luther to pulp?
“I want to know where Carys is.”
“No lady by that name here.”
Marty took a step toward the table. Luther seemed to sense that his repartee had gone sour. He slung down the magazine; the smile disappeared.
“Don’t get edgy, man.”
“Where is she?”
He smoothed the page in front of him, palm down across the sleek nude. “She’s gone,” he said.
“Where?”
“Gone, man. That’s all. You deaf, stupid, or both?”
Marty crossed the kitchen in one second flat and hauled Luther out of his chair. Like most spontaneous violence, there was no grace in it. The ragged attack threw them both off-balance. Luther half-fell back, an outflung arm catching a coffee cup, which leaped and smashed as they staggered across the kitchen. Finding his balance first, Luther brought his knee up into Marty’s groin.
“Je-sus!”
“You get your fucking hands off me, man!” Luther yelled, panicked by the outburst. “I don’t want no fight with you, right?” The demands became a plea for sanity-“Come on, man. Calm down.”
Marty replied by launching himself at the other man, fists flying. A blow, more chance than intention, connected with Luther’s face, and Marty followed through with three or four punches to stomach and chest. Luther, stepping back to avoid this assault,- slid in cold coffee and fell. Breathless and bloodied, he stayed down on the floor where he was safe, while Marty, eyes streaming from the blow to his balls, rubbed his aching hands.