And then I began thinking about Nat and Claudia Hambro, and I stopped feeling better and felt worse. Was he over at their house? Was everybody over there, my brother and Nat both? House guests of the Hambros?

No doubt Claudia Hambro was ten times as attractive as I. And Nat had never seen her before. Her magnetic personality—her ability to influence people; look at how she had gotten the upper hand with me, and Nat was far weaker a person than I. Not only that, it had always been evident that he was the kind of man that a woman can easily deal with. I saw that from the start. If an ordinary-looking woman like me, with only average intelligence and charm, could get such a reaction from him, what would Claudia get?

Thinking that, I began to drink as never before. After a while I lost count. All! could think of was Nat and Claudia Hambro, and then it all became mixed in with Charley coming back and killing me, possibly killing the girls . – . I saw Charley coming in the front door with the jar of smoked oysters for me again, and I found myself getting up out of my chair and going toward him, reaching for the oysters and being so glad that he had brought me a present.

He really will kill me, I realized. This time when he comes in the door he won’t hit me; he’ll kill me.

I got up from the chair and told the girls to put themselves to bed. Then I went into the utility room, bumping into the washer and drier as I did so, and got the little ax that I used to cut up kindling. Going into my bedroom I locked the door and all the windows and sat there on the bed with the ax on my lap.

I was still sitting there when I heard a man come in the front door. Is that him? I thought. Is that Charley or Jack or Nat? He couldn’t get out of the hospital tonight; he’s not supposed to get out until the day after tomorrow. And Jack hasn’t got a car. Didn’t I hear a car? Going to the window, I tried to see out onto the driveway, but a cypress tree blocked my view.

“Fay?” a man’s voice called from somewhere in the house.

“I’m in here,” I said.

Presently the man came to the door. “You in there, Fay?” he said.

“Yes,” I said.

He tried the door and discovered that it was locked. “It’s me,” he said. “Nat Anteil.”

I got up, then, and unlocked the door.

When he saw the ax he said, “What’s wrong?” As he took it out of my hands he saw the empty bourbon bottle; I had carried it into the bedroom with me and finished it. “Good god,” he said, putting his arms around me.

“Don’t you hug me,” I said. “Go hug Claudia Hambro.” With all my strength I shoved him away. “How was she?” I said. “A real good lay?”

He took me by the shoulder and half-led half-pushed me into the kitchen. There, he seated me at the table and put on the kettle of water.

“Go to hell,” I said. “I don’t want any coffee. Caffeine gives me nocturnal palpitations.”

“Then I’ll fix you some Sanka,” he said, getting down the jar of instant Sanka.

“That nothing coffee,” I said. But I let him fix me a cup of it anyhow.

16

At one in the afternoon his wife was to pick him up at the front entrance of the hospital and drive him home. But the night before, he telephoned Bill Jaffers, the shop foreman at his plant in Petaluma, and told him to come by the hospital with a pick-up truck at nine in the morning. He explained to Jaffers that his wife was too nervous to take the responsibility of driving him home.

So at eight-thirty he got out of his hospital bed, put on his clothes—his tie and white shirt and suit and shined black oxfords—made sure he had all his possessions in his suitcase, paid his bill at the business office of the hospital, and then sat outside on the steps waiting for Jaffers. The day was cool and bright, with no fog.

Finally the plant’s pick-up truck appeared and parked. Jaffers, a big dark-haired man in his early thirties, stepped out and up to Charley Hume.

“Hey, you’re looking almost well,” he said. He began picking up the pile of possessions stacked beside Charley and putting them into the bed of the truck.

“I feel okay,” Charley said, standing up. He felt weak and sick to his stomach, and he waited for Jaffers to help him into the cab.

Soon they were driving through downtown San Francisco, toward the Golden Gate Bridge. As always, traffic was heavy.

“Take your time,” he told Jaffers. As he figured it Fay would leave the house about eleven. He did not want to get there before she left, so that gave them two hours. “Don’t go tear-assing around curves like you do when you’re on company time, wearing out rubber that doesn’t cost you anything to replace.” He felt deeply despondent and leaned against the door to gaze out at the cars and houses and streets. “Anyhow, I have to stop along the way and buy some things,” he said.

“What do you have to get?” Jaffers said.

“None of your business,” Charley said. “I’ll get it.”

Sometime later they parked in the shopping district of one of the suburban Marin towns. Leaving Jaffers he got out of the truck and walked carefully down the street and around the corner to a large hardware store that he knew. There he bought a .22 revolver and two cartons of bullets. At home he had a number of guns, both rifles and pistols, but beyond any doubt Fay would have gotten them hidden. He had the clerk wrap the revolver and ammunition in such a way that no one could tell what it might be, and then he paid cash and left the store. Presently he was back in the truck, with the parcel on his lap.

As they drove on, Jaffers said, “Bet that’s for your wife.”

“You’re not kidding,” Charley said.

“That’s quite some wife you have,” Jaffers said.

Charley said, “You’re not just a-whistling Dixie.”

In Fairfax they stopped at a drive-in and had something to eat. Jaffers ate two hamburgers and a vanilla milkshake, but he himself had only a bowl of soup.

As they drove up the Sir Francis Drake Highway, through the park, Jaffers said, “This is sure beautiful country. We used to come up here all the time, up around Inverness, and fish. We used to catch salmon and bass.” He went on to describe the fishing equipment that he liked. Charley half-listened. “So the way I feel about spinners,” Jaffers concluded, “is that it’s fine for, say, surf fishing, but for stream fishing I don’t see the use. And Jesus, the good ones can cost you ninety-five bucks, just for the spinner alone.”

“That’s for sure,” Charley murmured.

The time, when they reached Drake’s Landing, was eleven-ten. She must have left, he decided. But as the truck reached the cypress lane that preceded his house he saw, between the trees, the flash of sunlight on the hood of the Buick. God damn her, he thought. She had not left.

“Go on by,” he said to Jaffers.

“What do you mean?” Jaffers said, slowing the truck and starting to turn into the driveway.

With ferocity, he said, “Keep going, you fink. Keep driving. Don’t go in the driveway.”

Bewildered, Jaffers brought the truck back onto the road and kept on. Peering back, Charley saw the front door of the house standing open. Evidently she was almost ready to leave.

“I don’t get it,” Jaffers said. He had apparently put together the sight of the Buick in the driveway and Charley’s desire to go on and not stop. “Doesn’t she know I picked you up? Christ’s sake, don’t you want to stop her before she leaves?”

“You mind your business or you’re fired,” Charley said. “You want to be out of a job? So help me god, I’ll fire you; I’ll write you out two weeks’ notice right now.”

“Okay,” Jaffers said. “But it’s a hell of a thing to let her drive all the way down to Frisco and all the way back for nothing.” He became moodily silent, continuing to drive.

“Park here,” Charley said, when they reached the top of a rise. “Get over on the shoulder. No, turn the truck around.”