The Trouble With Eden - Lawrence Block [96]
“I wish you would kill me, Petey.” That was a number she got off on one night, stringing it out endlessly until he managed to shut her up. “I want to die but I’ll never have the nerve to do it myself. But you could do it for me. You always do things for me, Petey. You could do this for me. I would help. We could make it look like suicide. We could figure out a plan. You’re good at plans, Petey. You could come up with a good plan.” And she went on telling him how much better it would be for everyone if she were dead. Better for her, because this was no way to live, no way to go on. And better for him and better for Robin and better for Linda, because he and Linda could get married and Robin could be their little girl and everyone could devote themselves to forgetting that Gretchen Vann ever lived.
Until one day, as he walked alone along the Towpath, he realized something.
He wanted her dead.
The thought caught him, sent a chill through him. He tried to get it out of his mind by force of will but it echoed in his brain and would not go away. In his mind he heard his own voice, cold and brittle: I want her to die.
THIRTEEN
Warren put his car in the driveway, walked to the front door of his house and fitted his key in the lock. As he opened the door, he heard Bert at the piano. He smiled and eased the door open slowly, silently. He padded softly across the plush powder-blue carpet and stopped at the archway leading to the living room.
“Night and Day.” “Always True to You in My Fashion.” “You’re the Top.”
He took deep silent breaths and let the music wrap itself around him. Usually he arrived home before Bert, but tonight he had gone with a crowd to the Barge Inn, had put himself outside of a half dozen cognacs, and Bert had finished his gig at the Carversville Inn and had come home still full of music. Bert had had classical training, and had spent many drunken evenings weeping over his wasted life, sure that he ought to be playing Mozart and Chopin on recital stages. But Warren knew that his special magic was with the material he performed routinely while people drank and talked over the notes he played. Cole Porter, Rodgers, and Hart, Harold Arlen—Bert’s fingers (not long and graceful, not at all, rather short and stubby but so sure of themselves, so certain at the keyboard) gave standards and show tunes a special grace.
Bert played for him, and often. But it was moments like these that Warren particularly treasured, when Bert was unaware of any audience. He liked to stand in shadow and listen. It was Cole Porter tonight, one song after another. “Anything Goes.” “Let’s Do It.” “Begin the Beguine”—
Finally, as a song ended, he cleared his throat and stepped into the room where Bert could see him. The dark head raised itself from the keys; the long saturnine face was creased with a smile. Warren applauded furiously and Bert lowered his head in a brief bow.
“Magnificent,” Warren said reverently.
“Devil. How long were you hulking there?”
“I don’t hulk. Since ‘Night and Day,’ I think.”
“Enjoy the concert?”
“More than I can say. If you would sing in public and if you were black, Bobby Short would have to find other way to make a living.”
“I doubt that he’s trembling at the prospect. How did, it go tonight?”
“It went. I was brilliant. The rest of the company was reassuringly adequate.”
“How comforting for you.”
“One lives for small triumphs.”
“Why don’t you make us drinks to honor the occasion?”
“When I arrive home first,” Warren said, “I see to it that drinks are waiting upon your return. Yet on those