The Night Companion
by Jeffrey Greene
Chapter 5: Roland’s Warning
part 2
Hearing those words, I felt a rush of desire. “You make it sound so terrible. I happen to think your sister’s gorgeous.”
“That’s the majority opinion. Personally, I prefer women broken down to electrons and beamed at me. It’s safer that way.” He sat down and let the ferret climb onto the back of the chair.
“Well...” I turned to leave.
“Hanauer?”
“Yes?”
“Believe me or not, I wouldn’t sleep here again. He has zeroed in on you. And one of these days, my sister may invite you to spend the night with her. Suit yourself, but don’t forget: she has an agenda.”
“Which is what?”
“I’m a neutral country, remember? But you have an advantage over the others: you’ve talked to me.” He fingered the remote and turned up the volume, his attention already absorbed into the dance of images.
“Well, see you.” I opened the door and walked out, hearing a murmured “goodbye” as I pulled it shut.
I knocked on Carla’s door and waited, but there was no answer. I started to knock again, and then heard the downstairs screen door slam and light, determined footsteps mounting the stairs. Sensing whose they were, I turned and stood straighter, my heart pounding with fear and anticipation.
Catherine Morhan came up from the darkness and stood framed in the light at the top of the stairs, her hand resting on the bannister, the other raised in an ambiguous gesture that could have been taken as a vague greeting, but which I interpreted as the arrested emphasis of some inner conversation.
She was looking at me or, rather, she was looking at the familiar sight of a man looking at her, and she calmly suffered my stare, giving me the full impact of her shape, sheathed in tight jeans, black sandals, and a black sleeveless blouse which, along with her dark-blond hair and the uncertain light, emphasized the almost luminous quality of her skin.
In spite of the way she’d treated me the first time and the warnings about her from the people who knew her best, I knew damn well that if she gave me half a chance, I wouldn’t be able to stay away from her. I knew myself for a fool and didn’t care. I pointed to the closed door. “I was just looking for Carla.”
“She’s downstairs in the kitchen,” she said, then added, with only a trace of sarcasm: “Cooking for you, I think.”
I took a step forward. “She probably got tired of waiting for me. I delivered a book to Roland, and we got to talking.” I noticed that she’d shed most of her jewelry, except for a thin gold necklace and an opal ring. “I guess she isn’t paying me to talk to her children,” I added, with what I hoped was not a fawning smile.
She too came a step closer, putting her hands in her pockets, her half-smile almost friendly. “Oh, I don’t think she minds. She’s always saying Roland needs friends.” She leaned against the wall and let her head fall back, showing me her fine, supple throat, and rolled her large eyes in a glance at Roland’s door, then turned them inquiringly on me. “But what would anyone find to talk about with Roland? Unless you’re a TV addict yourself... Or are you a ferret fancier?”
“Neither. Actually, we talked about you, though not very much. He has a strict code against family gossip. ‘Neutrality,’ he calls it.”
Coldly beautiful in repose, her smile revealed a comforting flaw: a small chip in one of her incisors. “And who brought me up as a subject?” she asked, looking keenly at me.
“I don’t remember,” I said, my eyes shifting away from hers. “Me, probably.”
“I’m afraid to ask what you said about me, considering what a bitch I was last Friday.” She began to worry a fold in the carpet with the toe of her shoe.
“You were just being protective. I understand. It is a strange job, since your mother doesn’t need a nurse. I’m really a hired conversationalist; admittedly an easy position to abuse.”
“But you haven’t, have you?” She arched her brows, and some of the toughness I’d seen before came into her expression.
I felt a twinge of guilt. “I’ve tried not to. But you had a right to be concerned. I admit I was angry at the time. You really chewed me out.”
She laughed, as if amused not only by what I’d said, but by the obvious effect the sight of her beautiful teeth had on my composure. “You’re pretty glib, Mr. Hanauer,” she said.
“Please, it’s ‘Tom.’ And you’re Catherine, right?”
“You know it is. Mother and Roland have obviously been dropping my name a lot lately. But it’s all right. I wanted to apologize for my behavior.”
“Accepted. And very pleased to meet you.” I put out my hand and she pulled her hand out of her pocket to grasp it. We stood there for a moment under the light, prolonging the handshake, her eyes warm, alive with possibilities, I so thrilled by the living charge of her flesh that all my unanswered questions about her receded to faint murmurings in the back of my mind.
“Well,” she said, with a hint of regret, disengaging her hand. “I’m on an errand for Mother, so...” She sauntered past me.
“Better get down there myself.” I walked to the head of the stairs, then paused and said over my shoulder: “Carla tells me you travel a lot.”
“Yes.” She nodded slowly, her hand on the doorknob. “Too much.”
“Planning another trip?” I asked, torn between pride and the need to state my intentions plainly.
“I’ll be around for a while.” She held my gaze for a moment, then opened the door and went in.
As I descended the stairs, it occurred to me — distantly — to be ashamed of myself for having accepted her sudden, surprising friendliness without question, in spite or even because of the scene in the restaurant. The boyfriend was apparently out of the picture, and I wanted more than I’d wanted anything in a long time to be, in Roland’s ominous phrase, “the next one.”
It had become a habit to look up at the professor’s window whenever I was on the walkway. The lights were off, as always, the windows shuttered. What was the worst that could happen, I wondered, if I just went up there and knocked on the door? I was startled by an agonized squeal coming from the upper reaches of the oak tree, followed by scrabbling sounds, then silence. Squirrel, I thought. An owl must have gotten it. Didn’t know they could scream like that. I glanced back at the window, hoping the sound might have drawn the professor to it but, seeing no one, I slid open the glass door and went into the kitchen. Carla was taking a baguette out of the oven. Turning, she acknowledged me with a curt nod toward the table, then ladled some soup into an earthenware bowl and placed it before me.
“Smells wonderful. What is it?”
“Sopa de ajo,” she replied, placing the bread on the table. “Garlic soup.”
I praised it repeatedly and, although she thanked me each time, she seemed moody and distracted, eating even less than her usual child’s portion. I’d just finished my second bowl when Catherine entered the room and handed her a fresh pack of cigarettes. Seeing them together for the first time, I was again struck by the daughter’s resemblance to her mother and began to realize how beautiful Carla must have been at Catherine’s age.
“Thank you, dear.” She tore off the cellophane as her daughter stood there, watching her with a kind of ironic deference, and lighted one immediately. “I don’t know how I could have forgotten my cigarettes,” she said, looking first at Catherine and then at me. “I must have been upset.”
I said, “Not at my tardiness, I hope,” squirming a little under her searching stare. I realized that my head had turned involuntarily when Catherine crossed my vision, and I felt guilty, as if Carla had caught me at something.
“No, I wasn’t upset with you. I’m glad Roland has found someone to talk to besides me and his ferrets. But as Catherine will tell you, I’m a selfish woman. I knew it was inevitable that my children would meet you.” Here she glanced sharply at Catherine. “And make their separate claims on your attention. But it hurts my vanity nonetheless.”
“Since you’re paying for his attentions, I can’t blame you,” said Catherine dryly. “But I’m satisfied that Tom won’t be playing hooky on your time.” She had hardly glanced at me since entering the room, but her body — half-turned towards me in a provocative slouch, with a fist on one hip and the other hand playing with the ends of her hair — was too deliberately posed not to be both a goad to my desire and a taunt to her mother’s... jealousy? Was that possible?
“Oh, so you’ve introduced yourselves?” said Carla, raising her eyebrows in mock surprise. “Good. Then the hatchet is buried. And I don’t have to take responsibility for introducing a man to my daughter.” Catherine glared at her but Carla ignored her, looking at me with a cynical squint. “Well, Tom, you seem to have risen in her estimation. You might even become one of her ‘friends.’”
“Mother...” Catherine said warningly.
“You remember me telling you about her friends, don’t you?” I blushed, keeping my eyes on my plate. “Well, by a lucky coincidence, she just put the last one on a bus back to Oklahoma.”
“Can’t you keep quiet for once?” said Catherine, her voice rising. “Do you have to say everything you think?”
Carla smiled thinly and went on talking to me as if her daughter wasn’t there. “And here you are, in her own back yard. It’s too convenient to pass up.”
“Shut up! Just shut up!”
At this point I got up and headed for the door. “I think I’ll go set up the chessboard. Excuse me.”
“He’s enjoying this,” said Carla in the same tone of savage jocularity. “He thinks we’re fighting over him. I’m sorry, Tom,” she called after me. “I should have warned you. This is what happens when Catherine comes home.”
I left the room but lingered in the hallway, wanting to hear more.
“Of course, blame me. It’s always my fault,” shouted Catherine. “My God, if you could hear yourself! Being such a fool in front of a man half your age. Your jealousy is pathetic. Ridiculous.”
“Jealousy!?” she shouted back. “That’s what you call wanting to keep him away from you? You lie to yourself as well as your father now. He must be proud of you.”
“Screw it. I’ll go to a motel before I’ll listen to anymore of this shit.”
I heard Catherine’s footsteps and hurried down the hall. As I went out, I heard Carla’s shouted reply: “You think I don’t know why you’re going to a motel tonight!?”
Several minutes passed before Carla joined me in the living room. Her face was ashen, eyes downcast, her mouth grim and set. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I didn’t... That was ugly. You shouldn’t have been subjected to that.”
“It’s all right.”
She shook her head. “It’s not all right. I don’t know what I was thinking... how I ever thought I could keep you away from her.”
“But why do you—”
She stopped me with an impatient wave of the hand. “Listen. You don’t know the half of it. I admit to being selfish. I wanted someone to talk to, and why not a young man? But that was all: just someone to talk to. She’s not completely wrong. I am a little jealous. But there’s much more to it than that, and I won’t stand by and let her use you to punish me. Hiring you was a mistake; I see that now.”
“A mistake?” I stood up. “So I’m fired? Just like that? Because I’m attracted to your daughter? Come on now, Carla, that’s not rational, and you know it.”
“Yes, it is,” she said. “I can’t make you understand why, but it’s the only thing left for me to do. You’re in love with Catherine. Do you deny that?”
I hesitated. “I’m something with her. It’s too soon to say what.”
She leaned back with finality, and pulled a check out of her pocket. “I wrote this earlier tonight, hoping I could tear it up. But when I saw the way you looked at her” — she handed it to me — “it includes a month’s severance pay. I’ll give you the best references, but I have to ask you not to come here again.”
“You know this won’t keep me from seeing her?”
“I know. But if you see her here, you’ll be trespassing.”
We glared at each other, then I turned my back on her and left the house.
Copyright © 2021 by Jeffrey Greene
