Threesome - Lawrence Block [56]
“Maybe,” she said, doubtfully. “Priss, let’s make love.”
“I don’t know if I can.”
“Please, let’s.”
“Maybe later.”
I was taking another shower—I always seemed to be in the shower—when the curtain was drawn back and Rhoda got in with me. “I thought I’d soap your back,” she said.
We washed each other.
“Remember doing this at school?”
“I remember.”
“We used to giggle.”
“Yes.”
We got out and dried off, and she led me to her room. She had evidently gone out earlier and come back with a jug of California burgundy.
“Remember?”
“Of course.”
“Let’s get a little drunk. Remember how I taught you how to hold the bottle and drink from that jug?”
We drank quite a bit of wine and we made love. It was very warm and tender. I kept wanting to cry, but didn’t.
“Priss? Even if it’s just us, just you and me, if he doesn’t come back, it’ll be all right.”
“It will?”
“We’ll be two old dykes with our children. It will work out fine.”
“It will?”
I stayed in bed until she feel asleep. Then I got up and wanted to take another shower but didn’t. I took the jug of wine with me and went into the living room. I drank quite a lot of it, I guess.
I thought about Glory. I wondered if there was any way at all to get in touch with her. I decided that there wasn’t, and that it was probably just as well.
Then I took all the sleeping pills and went to bed.
RHODA
Rrrring!
“Hotel Royalton, good morning.”
“Mr. Harry Kapp, please.”
“One moment please.”
Rrrring!
“Hello?”
“Harry?”
“Rhoda?”
“Yes. I just got your letter, Harry.”
“Oh. Uh, how is everybody?”
“I’m fine.”
“And Priss?”
“Priss is going to be all right.”
“What?”
“Priss had an accident, Harry.”
“Ohmigod. What happened?”
“She was very depressed.”
“For Christ’s sake, what happened?”
“She took some sleeping pills.”
“She’s not—“
She’s all right.”
“And the baby?”
“She vomited up the pills in her sleep. She took enough to kill her but she threw them up. It looked as though it might be bad for the baby, but I took her to a doctor and he checked everything and he says the baby is going to be all right, too. I wanted to get in touch with you but there was no way until I got your letter. I called everywhere. I called Marcia, and for that matter Priss had already spoken to Marcia—”
“She did?”
“She wanted to find out where you were, Harry. But Marcia didn’t know.”
“No, nobody knew.”
“Well, I called again to make sure, and then I called your agent but she only knew that you were in New York.”
“I didn’t tell anybody where I was staying.”
“Yes, I know that now. When your letter came I read it, and then I thought I had better call you right away. I think you ought to come home.”
“I’ll get the next train out there. Is Priss—?”
“She’s really going to be all right.”
“And the baby?”
“Both babies are going to be all right. I can feel mine moving. You can put your hand on my stomach and feel him kicking.”
“I’ll be right out.”
“Shall I meet you at the station?”
“No, the Chevy’s there.”
“Will it start? It’s been just sitting there.”
“It always starts. Stay with Priss. Is she there now? Can I talk to her?”
“She’s sleeping. I could wake her.”
“Don’t do that. I’ll be there as soon as I can. And Rhoda?”
“Yes?”
“Tell her I love her.”
“She knows that now.”
“So do I.”
EPILOGUE, OR AFTERWORD, OR CODA, OR SOME SUCH
I typed up the phone conversation while waiting for Harry’s train to get here. I had already typed his letter and added it to the growing stack of manuscript, and I figured I might say something to bring things up to date, but after a few false starts I gave up attempting a formal or even informal narrative and decided to put down as much as I could remember of the telephone conversation. It seems cheating, in a way. I suppose I should have written up the whole scene of discovering Priss sprawled in her bed with a little pool of vomit at the side of the bed, and traces of half-dissolved pills in the vomit, and the whole panic, and calling the doctor, and pouring coffee into Priss and walking her around the room, all of that crap,