“Oh, Marty . . .” she whispered.
As he looked down at her gleaming hair someone appeared at the top of the stairs.
“What’s the problem?”
Marty looked up. Flynn was standing on the half-landing, dressed only in underwear and socks. He was unshaven. For a few seconds he said nothing, juggling the options. Then the smile, his panacea, swarmed across his face.
“Marty,” he exclaimed, “what’s buzzing?”
Marty looked at Charmaine, who was looking at the floor. She- had the coat in her arms, bundled up like a dead animal.
“I see,” Marty said.
Flynn descended a few stairs. His eyes were bloodshot.
“It’s not what you think. Really it isn’t,” he said, stopping halfway down, waiting to see which way Marty would jump.
“It’s exactly what you think, Marty,” Charmaine said quietly. “I’m sorry you had to find out like this, but you never rang. I said ring before you come round.”
“How long?” Marty murmured.
“Two years, more or less.”
Marty glanced up at Flynn. They’d played together with that black girl-Ursula, was it?-only a few weeks past, and when the milk was spilt Flynn had slid away. He’d come back here, to Charmaine. Had he washed, Marty wondered, before he’d joined Charmaine in their double bed? Probably not.
“Why him?” he found himself asking. “Why him, for Christ’s sake? Couldn’t you have improved on that?”
Flynn said nothing in his own defense.
“I think you should leave, Marty,” Charmaine said, clumsily attempting to rebox the coat.
“He’s such a shit,” Marty said. “Can’t you see what a shit he is?”
“He was there,” she retorted bitterly. “You weren’t.”
“He’s a fucking pimp, for Christ’s sake!”
“Yes,” she said, letting the box lie, and standing up at last, eyes furious, to spit all the truth out. “Yes, that’s right. Why do you think I took up with him?”
“No, Char-”
“Hard times, Marty. Nothing to live on but fresh air and love letters.”
She’d whored for him; the fucker had made her whore. On the stairs, Flynn had gone a sickly color. “Hold up, Marty,” he said. “No way did I make her do a damn thing she didn’t want to do.”
Marty moved to the bottom of the stairs.
“Isn’t that right?” Flynn appealed to Charmaine. “Tell him, woman! Did I make you do a thing you didn’t want to do?”
“Don’t,” Charmaine said, but Marty was already starting up the stairs. Flynn stood his ground for two steps only, then retreated backward. “Hey, come on . . .” Palms up, to keep the blows at bay.
“You made my wife a whore?”
“Would I do that?”
“You made my wife a fucking whore?”
Flynn turned and made a bid for the landing. Marty stumbled up the stairs after him.
“Bastard!”
The escape ploy worked: Flynn was safely behind the door and wedging a chair against it before Marty could get to the landing. All he could do was beat on the panels, demanding, uselessly, that Flynn let him in. But it took only a small interruption to spoil his anger. By the time Charmaine got to the top of the stairs he’d left off haranguing the door, and was leaning back on the wall, eyes stinging. She said nothing; she had neither the means nor the desire to cross the chasm between them.
“Him,” was all he could say. “Of all people.”
“He’s been very good to me,” she replied. She had no intention of pleading their case; Marty was the intruder here. She owed him no apology.
“It wasn’t as if I walked out.”
“It was your doing, Marty. You lost for both of us. I never got a say in the matter.” She was trembling, he saw, with fury, not with sorrow. “You gambled everything we had. Every damn thing. And lost it for us both.”
“We’re not dead.”
“I’m thirty-two. I feel twice that.”
“He makes you tired.”
“You’re so stupid,” she said, without feeling; her cool contempt withered him. “You never saw how fragile everything was: you just went on being the way it suited you to be. Stupid and selfish.”
Marty bit at his upper lip, watching her mouth as it spoke the truth at him. He wanted to hit her, but that wouldn’t make her any less right; just bruised and right. Shaking his head, he stepped past her and thundered down the stairs. She was silent above.