Hell Hath No Fury by Charles Williams 1953(10)

Maybe that
was what she’d meant by saying I’d always come
back. It was so easy to remember the last time.
The funeral was Wednesday afternoon, and they
still hadn’t found Sutton. I couldn’t seem to sleep at
all now. I’d doze off for a few minutes and then wake
up sweating and scared. I wondered how much
longer I could take it.
Hell Hath No Fury — 188
Gloria and Gulick and I ordered a big floral piece
for the funeral, and we all went, of course.
Everybody in the county seemed to be there. Gloria
cried along at the end of it, and I had to blow my
nose several times myself. He was a good man, a
better man than I was, even if I’d been a long time in
finding it out. Gloria and I drove around afterwards,
not going anywhere, and that awkward silence was
still there between us. When I took her home we sat
in the car a few minutes in front of the house.


“What do you suppose she’ll do with the
business?” she asked. “Do you think she’ll sell out?”
I got what she meant, and it was the first time I’d
thought of it. There’d been so much I’d overlooked
that possibility of grief. If she did sell there’d be an
audit of the books, and it’d probably happen before
we could get all that deficit cleaned up, even though
I still had the five hundred dollars that was in
Sutton’s wallet. God, I thought, how messed up can
you get?
“I don’t know,” I said. “She hasn’t said a thing, and
I didn’t want to bother her with business. But I’ll see
what I can find out.”
But I didn’t find out anything. She didn’t call up or
come around the place, and I didn’t call her because
I was reaching the point I couldn’t think about
anything except Sutton, and when they’d find him,
and what the inquest would turn up when they did.
It went on all day and all night because I never slept
more than a few minutes at a time now. In another
day or two I even quit seeing Gloria. I didn’t even
call her up. I was so savage and on edge I didn’t
know what I’d do or say next. By the Saturday after
the funeral I wondered if I wasn’t reaching the
breaking point. I began to have an idea they’d found
him and weren’t saying anything, just waiting for me
to crack under the strain. Maybe they were just
playing with me, and any minute one of them would
tap me on the shoulder. And then I’d get hold of
myself and I’d know this wasn’t true. They just
hadn’t found him yet. Nobody ever went out there.
I’d just have to wait. Wait! God, how much longer
Hell Hath No Fury — 189
could I stand it?
It broke on Sunday morning. Two farm boys
hunting rabbits found him and came to town to
report it to Tate. Everybody was talking about it
around the drugstore and the restaurant. The Sheriff
himself came over and they went out to the oil well
and were gone for a little over two hours. When they
returned, early in the afternoon, they brought the
body out and went on back to the county seat.
Nobody knew anything except what the boys had
said. He was sitting at a table, kind of bent over it,
and looked like he had been dead a long time, and
they were afraid of him. They didn’t go inside the
cabin.
I had to live through Sunday afternoon with
nothing more than that. I couldn’t go around asking
everybody I met what they’d heard about it. I went
back to my room, but in a little while I knew I’d go
crazy there. The old man next door was reading the
Bible again. I got in the car and drove over to the
county seat to a movie. It was a long picture, or
maybe it was a double feature and I didn’t realize it,
and when I came back it was dark. There was still
the night to get through. When I got back to town I
went to the restaurant and forced down a little food.
Tate had come back, somebody said, but he hadn’t
talked about it. The man died of a gunshot wound.
And there’d be an inquest Monday morning. That
was all.
I sat on the bed smoking cigarettes in the darkness
until after three, and when fatigue caught up with
me and I dozed off I began having dreams. When I
shaved, I could see it on my face. I couldn’t take
much more. I held on to it all through Monday
morning and into the afternoon, burying myself in
paper work and going out on the lot now and then to
go through the motions of demonstrating a car to
faceless and unreal people.
I went up to the restaurant for a cup of coffee at
three-thirty, and the waitress told me. She was just
making conversation. She was bored, and it was
something to talk about. Tate had been in. They’d
Hell Hath No Fury — 190
held an inquest on that man, what was his name, the
one who lived out by the oil well that had been found
dead, remember—yesterday morning, wasn’t it—
sure it was yesterday morning because that was
Sunday and she was just dead, that dance Saturday
night, honestly—but about the man, they had held an
inquest, she thought that was what Tate called it,
and the man had been shot through the head with a
gun, wasn’t it awful, and Tate had told her the way it
was— Oh, the verdict?
It was accidental death. The man had shot himself
cleaning a gun, wasn’t it silly.
I never did know afterwards how I got back to the
lot. All I can remember is sitting there at my desk
trying to get my mind to accept the news that I had
done it, that we were free of Sutton forever, and that
the danger was all past. It was just too much for me
to take in all at once. I’d been living with the danger
and the suspense for so long I couldn’t readjust that
quickly.
Suddenly, I had to tell Gloria. I wanted to call her
on the phone. I’d been avoiding her because of the
pressure I was under, and now I wanted to see her
and start making up for it. Then I stopped. What was
I going to tell her? Sutton was something we didn’t
talk about. And certainly not over the phone. But I
wanted to call her anyway, and make a date to see
her that night. We could go on now. Everything
would be just the way it had been before, and
somehow we’d break down that wall that had grown
up between us. Some way I could make her
understand it didn’t matter. But I wouldn’t call her;
she was just across the street, and I wanted to see
her. I had started out the door when the phone rang.
“Mr. Madox?” the voice said when I picked up the
receiver. It was Dolores Harshaw.
“Yes,” I said.
“I’m sorry I haven’t called before, but I’m sure
you’ll understand. I wanted to thank you for the
flowers and for being so kind, and all. It was very
nice of all of you.” She paused. Now, what the hell, I
Hell Hath No Fury — 191
thought. Why so goody-goody? There must be
somebody in the room with her, one of the
neighbors, or the maid.

“Why, that’s all right,” I said. “It was the least we
could do.”
“Well, it was awful nice. But what I wanted to talk
to you about was the business. I know you’ve been
wonderful about it; what my plans were, I mean. Do
you think you could come over tonight, say around
seven, so we could discuss it, you and Miss Harper
both, I mean?”
“Sure,” I said. “I’ll tell her. We were wondering
about it, as a matter of fact, but we didn’t want to
bother you. Are you planning to sell out? Is that it?”
“Oh, no. I guess from what the lawyers say it’ll
take some time for the whole thing to be settled, but
I wouldn’t sell out anyway. I think I should try to
carry it on—for George’s sake, you know. And of
course I’ll want you and Miss Harper to go right on
the way you have been. I’m sure it couldn’t be in
better hands.”
There must be a dozen people in the room, I
thought. She hadn’t even thrown in a nasty dig at
Gloria just for old times’ sake. Maybe she’d decided
to become a social leader, and pull down the shades
before she turned in with her boy friends. Well, I
didn’t care a damn what she did, as long as she paid
my salary.
After she had hung up I sat there a few minutes
letting it soak in before I called Gloria. It was
wonderful to tell her.
I picked her up that evening and we started over. I
thought of how much it was like that other time,
when Harshaw had asked us to come over. And
afterwards we could go out to the river, as we had
then, and I could take her face in my hands and kiss
her and we could break through to each other again.
We would start all over. The past was gone. Sutton
didn’t matter any more. I could make her see that. I
knew I could.
She broke in on my thoughts. “Harry,” she said,
Hell Hath No Fury — 192
“there’s something I’ve got to tell you. I’ve been
trying to all week, but I want to tell you now.”
“We’ll go somewhere afterwards and talk,” I said.
“Then you can tell me, if you think you have to.”
“Yes. I have to. It’s about Sutton.”
I stared ahead into the lights, trying to keep my
face still. “Sutton’s dead. Nothing matters about him
any more. Nothing at all. You believe me, don’t you,
honey, that it doesn’t matter now?”
“This does, Harry. I’ve got to tell you. You see, I
thought all week that he had gone away. Because—
Well, you see, I gave him that five hundred dollars.
After you told me not to. I took it out there and
begged him to leave. So now it’s going to take us
that much longer.”
I reached out and patted her hand. “It’s all right,” I
said. “It doesn’t make any difference.”
It was a strange thing for her to say, I thought.
Why bring up that one part of the whole mess, if we
were going to ignore it? I should have got it then,
but I didn’t, for we were turning in the driveway and
I didn’t think about it any more. I stopped by the
side porch and we got out. The light was on and as
we rang the bell and stood there waiting I looked at
her, thinking how pretty she was. She had on a
yellow summer dress with big fluffy bows or
something on the shoulders, and her stockings were
some dark shade. She seemed to like dark-colored
nylons—
I was staring. I couldn’t say anything, and the skin
on the back of my neck was tightening up into
gooseflesh like frozen sandpaper. I got it now, when
it was forever too late.
It was what she was wearing on her feet. They
were wedgies. They were wedgies with grass straps.
Hell Hath No Fury — 193
21
Dolores Harshaw came to the door then and let us
in. I was numb. I was operating on pure reflex,
trying to keep going and cover up. Somewhere far
off I could hear them giving it the how-nice-you-look
and what-a-lovely-dress routine while the wreckage
fell all around me and I could see what I had done.
There was no escape. There wasn’t any way to go
back, so all I could do was walk the rest of the way
into it and pray. It was all dangerous now, and I
knew it, but I wondered if she did. We were standing
hip-deep in gunpowder and she might not have any
more sense than to reach for a match. I’d killed
Sutton, and she was the only one on earth who knew
it. Did she realize what that meant? All the time I’d
thought it was Gloria, and Gloria didn’t know
anything. She was standing there in the magazine
with us, and no matter what happened I had to be
sure she was out before it blew up.
There was too much of it and it was coming at me
too fast to see the whole picture at once. Crazy
pieces of it kept flashing up in the sick confusion of
my thoughts, and then they’d be gone and there’d be
something else. There was Harshaw. I didn’t have to
wonder any more why he’d had a heart attack and
Hell Hath No Fury — 194
fallen down the stairs at a crazy hour like that. Had
he just happened to catch her coming in at three in
the morning barefoot and naked except for a dress
half torn off by the underbrush and stuck to her with
the rain, or had she done it deliberately? Nobody
would ever know, and they couldn’t touch her.
Maybe he had given her that bruise on the shoulder,
or maybe she’d got it when she fell over us back
there in the shack. But what difference did It make?
She knew I’d killed Sutton and I had to shut her up,
but how?
And now I knew why Sutton had waited all that
time to put the squeeze on me. He hadn’t even been
there at the fire; or at least he hadn’t seen me. She’d
told him. When I’d given her the brush-off, she’d
merely gone back to him, and because there wasn’t
any other way to get even with me she’d told him the
whole thing. And now he was dead because he
thought he could cash in on it, and she knew I’d
killed him, and why.
“Don’t you feel well, Mr. Madox?”
I tried to come out of it. She was looking at me
with the dead-pan innocence of a baby. All the ashblonde
curls were burnished and glinting in the
lamplight, and the shiny black dress looked as if it
had been packed by hand. She was in deep
mourning from the skin out and laughing inside like
a cat up to its whiskers in cream. I’d given her the
brush, and now she could hang me. All she had to do
was pick up the phone and call the Sheriff.
Is she stupid, or what? I thought. Doesn’t she
know I’ll kill her? But then I knew the answer to
that, too. She wasn’t stupid. She’d asked Gloria to
come, hadn’t she?
“Oh,” I said. “I’m all right. I feel fine.”
There was nothing showing on the surface. Gloria
couldn’t suspect anything at all. We went over and
sat down, Gloria in a big chair and I on the sofa
across from her, while Dolores Harshaw leaned back
in a platform rocker. We were all grouped around
the coffee table.
Hell Hath No Fury — 195
“I know you’ve been wondering,” Dolores said, “I
mean, about the business. I would have called you
sooner, but it’s been such a blow, you know—”
She went on giving us the brave little widow
bearing up under everything. I didn’t pay any
attention to it. I was too busy with the physical
strain of keeping my face from showing anything
and trying to find the answer to the question that
went around and around in my mind in a kind of
endless nightmare. What was she going to do?
I could hear her voice going on, like a radio in a
burning house. “—what poor George would have
wanted. He thought a great deal of both of you. So of
course I couldn’t sell out. I’m going to try to carry on
just the same.”
She had the rope around my neck, and when she
got ready she’d drop the trap. With Gloria here I was
helpless. And she knew that, of course, so whatever
it was it was going to be done now, before we left
and I got a chance to get her alone.
She was picking up an envelope which was lying
on the coffee table. “It must have been terrible,” she
went on, “because I think he knew in his heart it
might happen any time. Ever since we came back
from Galveston he had a little notebook that stayed
right by his side all the time, and he kept writing
down his ideas about the business and the things he
wanted to be sure would be carried on just—” Her
voice broke a little. She was tremendous as the
brave little widow. She gathered herself up with a
pitiful smile and went on. “—just in case it did
happen. I’ve written it all out, and I thought Mr.
Madox should read it, since he’ll be in charge. And
of course you too, Miss Harper, if he thinks you
should.”
She handed it over to me. There was nothing in
her face but that same dead-pan innocence. Gloria
was watching her, and then me, with only polite
curiosity. She probably thought she’d been working
for Harshaw long enough to know his politics.
I opened the envelope and slid it out. It was a
Hell Hath No Fury — 196
carbon copy, two pages single-spaced on a
typewriter. I looked at the heading of it, and I knew
where the original was. It was in a safe-deposit box
somewhere or in some lawyer’s office, where I’d
never get to it. And I knew that I wasn’t going to kill
her. As long as both of us lived, the safest place she
would ever be was with me, and I was going to hope
she went on living for a long, long time.
“This statement is to be turned over to the District
Attorney’s office after my death,” it began, and she
had it all there. She hadn’t left out a thing. She
admitted lying about my being there at the fire right
after it broke out, and described the way I had
driven up and hurried into the crowd thirty minutes
later. She told them about my having been in the
building before, and how she had told Sutton all of
this, and of her recognizing me in the lightning flash
when the storm broke that night. The clincher was
at the end, and it was something I hadn’t known
before. She’d gone back down there just after
daybreak, after the doctor had left the house. She
had to know what had happened, because her purse
and things were there. And when she found Sutton
dead and the purse gone she had it all.
I read it all the way through, cold as ice and seeing
the walls rise up around me. I could quit looking for
a way out. There wasn’t any. As long as she was
living she could turn me in any time she felt like it,
and the minute she died of anything at all they’d
have that statement. It wasn’t witnessed, of course,
and maybe it wasn’t legal, but it didn’t have to be.

It
put the finger on me, and the weight of all the other
evidence would be overwhelming. They’d get it out
of me. Of course, if she turned it over to them while
she was still alive, she might be in trouble herself—
but that was a laugh, or would have been if I hadn’t
felt more like screaming. I’d go to the electric chair,
and she might get a few months’ suspended
sentence.
I folded it up very slowly and slipped it back in the
envelope while they watched me. I couldn’t say
anything. I didn’t trust my voice. Somehow I
Hell Hath No Fury — 197
managed to keep my face utterly blank as I dropped
it on the coffee table and looked, at her. She had me
and she knew it. I waited.
And then she let me have it, without saying a word
to me. She was talking to Gloria.
She leaned back in her chair and lighted a
cigarette. She was friendly, and quite sympathetic.
“Now about the shortage in your accounts, Miss
Harper,” she said. “I know you’ll understand that
Mr. Madox was only doing what he believed was
right when he told me about it. And of course I
wouldn’t think of bringing charges. You can continue
right on the way you have been until it’s all taken
care of, and you’ll still have your job afterwards if
you want it. I want you to know, dear, that we’re
your friends, and that he hated having to do it as
much as I hate having to mention it now. And he
insisted that you be given another chance—”
That was the end, and that was the way she did it.
Just one clean swing of the ax. And it was something
I hadn’t even thought of. She had told Sutton about
me, and then Sutton had told her. They must have
had a wonderful time. And I’d had them both dead to
rights in the shack that night, and had let her get
away. I didn’t want to think about it. I’d go crazy.
Gloria sat straight upright in her chair, saying
nothing, and when she turned to look at me her face
was pale and her eyes were unbelieving and they
were waiting for me to say something, anything at
all, even one word, or to say it with my eyes if I
couldn’t open my mouth, and then after a long time
she quit waiting and turned her face away. It was
very simple. I had just watched myself die.
I didn’t have to let her believe it, of course. After
all, I had a choice. I had a lovely choice. I could have
told her the truth.
She was magnificent. I think I loved her more at
that moment than I ever had before, but maybe it
was just because she was gone forever now and I
was thinking about that. She got up with her face
very still and controlled, and said politely, “Yes, I
Hell Hath No Fury — 198
understand, Mrs. Harshaw. And of course it will all
be paid back. So if there isn’t anything else, you
don’t mind if I go now, do you?”
Dolores got up and said sweetly, “Of course not,
dear.”
Before I thought, I stood up. “Wait,” I said. “I—I’ll
drive you home.”
“Thank you,” she said, looking at the place I would
have been standing if I had existed. “I’ll walk.”
She went out, and the screen door closed behind
her, and I heard her going down the steps and along
the gravel of the drive.
After her steps had died away there was silence in
the room and I turned around and looked at this
woman I was tied to for as long as I could go on
living. She was leaning back in the platform rocker
with her legs crossed and one foot swinging, and she
was smiling.
“Harry, darling,” she said, “I don’t think you’ll ever
have much luck explaining to her.”
I thought of how near I had been to winning, every
step of the way, and how I’d just missed it every
time because of her. I could have stopped Sutton
without killing him if she hadn’t told him about the
bank, because Sutton was afraid of me until he had
that. And if she hadn’t been there in the shack that
night, if I’d sense enough to know it had to be her—
I thought of Gloria walking home alone in the dark
believing that I had sold her out for this sexy tubful
of guts and her money, believing it and forever,
because I could never tell her.
The room was filling with that same red mist
there’d been that night I’d killed Sutton. What did it
matter now if they sent me to the chair? I’d lost it
all. I’d lost everything because of her. I walked
slowly over and stood looking down at the sensuous
and slightly mocking face and the white column of
her throat.
“You’ll have to beg now,” she said. “You had your
chance, but you threw it away because you wanted
Hell Hath No Fury — 199
that little owl. I’m going to enjoy hearing you beg me
to marry you. You see, you have to look after me,
Harry. Something might happen to me—”
“Yes,” I said. “Something might.”
Maybe she heard the murder in my voice, because
she quit smiling and her eyes went wide. I reached
down and caught the front of the black dress. It
ripped loose at her belly and everything from there
on up came off in my hand, but she came up out of
the chair with the force of it and stood there
swaying, the scream beginning and then chopping
suddenly off as I put my right hand on her throat and
threw her across the coffee table on to the sofa. I
went across it after her just as she wiggled off the
sofa on to the floor, still trying to get her breath to
scream, and then I was on her. I got both hands on
her throat and there was nothing inside me but the
black madness of that desire to kill her, to close my
hands until she turned purple and lay still and
there’d be an end to her forever. Let them send me
to the chair. Let ‘em burn me. All they could do was
kill me—
It’s like committing suicide by holding your breath.
I relaxed my hands and turned her loose.
“You see, Harry,” she said. She looked down at
the wreckage of her clothing and the big, spread-out
breasts, and then at me, and smiled. She’d been
right the first time, and she knew it.
“Kiss me,” she said.
“Yes,” I said. We were lying against the edge of the
sofa and her hair was mussed and she was half
naked and I could smell the perfume she always
wore.
The smile broadened and she put her arms up
around my neck. “Yes, what?”
I knew the answer now.
“Yes, dear,” I said.
That was almost a year ago. We’re married now,
and I go to work every morning at nine, and sell
cars, and lend money, and make more than I know
Hell Hath No Fury — 200
what to do with. I belong to the Chamber of
Commerce, and the service clubs, and even the
Volunteer Fire Department. I like to think that some
day I might be a director of the bank, because that
would be the final, supreme laugh of them all when
I’m lying awake at night. It’s something to look
forward to—not much, but something—and maybe
some day I’ll make it and become the only bank
director in the world who started at the bottom by
robbing the bank and worked his way up by
becoming indispensable to a bitch, and the only one
anywhere who has twelve thousand three hundred
dollars of his bank’s assets buried under six inches
of slowly rotting manure in a collapsing barn on a
sandhill and who intends to let it stay there until the
barn rots and the money rots and he rots himself,
because if he ever dug it up and looked at it he’d go
crazy and kill himself. It’s an ambition, and
everybody should have one, even if it’s only a good
laugh in the middle of the night when he has a little
trouble getting to sleep because he’s worrying about
his wife. She might be tiring of him, or catching
cold.
I’ve given up trying to find out where the original
of that statement is, and I know I’ll never get my
hands on it, the same as I know I’ll never have the
nerve to take a chance and run. Of course she
probably wouldn’t do anything. A dozen times I’ve
almost made it. I get in the car and think that all I
have to do is drive, and keep on driving, and the
chances are she wouldn’t do a thing. Why should
she? She’d only get herself in trouble for abetting a
crime and withholding evidence, and I’d be gone,
and when they did get me back all she’d have would
be a corpse with a shaved spot on his head and a
couple of them on his arms, and that wouldn’t be of
much use to a woman who needs them living.
I know a way to make her talk, and I’ve tried it
twice, and asked her, and she told me everything
except where that statement is, and I know that if
she wouldn’t tell me then she’ll never tell me. It was
a good idea, but it didn’t work, and I’ll never try it
Hell Hath No Fury — 201
any more because the second time she stopped right
in the middle of gasping, “Oh, God, please, please,
darling, please,” and got out of bed and went
downstairs naked and when she came back holding
her hands behind her I didn’t know it was an ice-pick
she had until she had put it through my neck. It went
in a little off center and missed the jugular vein by a
good three-quarters of an inch, and came out under
my ear. A little iodine fixed it up and it didn’t even
get infected, but I never tried that again. She was in
a position of strength, as lawyers say, and she
wouldn’t tolerate work stoppage or breach of
contract in mid-term.

She did tell me about the silver money clasp. When
Gloria went out there in the afternoon she had the
five hundred dollars in it, and when Sutton saw it he
demanded it as well as the money. And then he told
Dolores about it, and showed it to her, and she
wanted it. He wouldn’t give it to her, though, and
she’d left it lying there on the table, intending to slip
it into her purse when he wasn’t looking. And if I
hadn’t just happened to pull the purse around that
final inch, looking behind it for the ash-tray—but I
never go much beyond that with it. You can take just
so much might-have-been.
She’d been really scared, of course, when she went
back a little after daylight that morning to get her
stuff and found Sutton dead. She knew, because the
stuff was gone, that I’d found the money clasp and
thought it was Gloria, but she also knew I’d get wise
to my mistake sooner or later, and that I’d have to
kill her to cover it up. So she had written out that
statement as soon as she got back to the house, plus
a letter to the lawyers to tell them where to find it—
along with her will—in case of her death. The only
thing she had to do then was to make sure I read a
copy of it before I got my hands on her.
Gloria had no choice but to believe what she told
her. After all, I didn’t deny it. She gave me every
chance to say it wasn’t true, and I couldn’t even look
at her. And to make it worse she already knew I had
changed somehow and even seemed to avoid her
Hell Hath No Fury — 202
from the very night Harshaw died. Naturally, she
had no way of knowing it was also the night Sutton
died, and that he was what was on my mind, and I
couldn’t tell her.
Not that I know what she really thinks, or that I’ll
ever know. We work together from nine until five
and she is very efficient and does a beautiful job and
she says, “Yes, Mr. Madox,” and “No, Mr. Madox,”
and in her eyes there’s nothing but polite reserve
and behind that nothing but blankness, an
impenetrable wall of it. Beyond that— Who knows?
Maybe there’s no feeling at all, not even contempt.
Probably there’s only a big calendar pad of so many
months, so many more weeks, and days, and hours,
that she has left ahead of her until she can put the
last penny back and balance the books and be free.
And I can’t even help her. I’ve got plenty of money,
enough to put it all back at once, and I love her
enough to want to give her the only thing she
probably lives for—the day she can tear the last
page off that calendar and go away forever—and I
can’t shorten her sentence one day. Dolores knows
too well just how much is left and how long it will
take. But even if I could help her, she wouldn’t
accept it. It’s something she has to do.
But that still isn’t the terrible part of it, the thing
that will drive me crazy some night if I don’t find
some way to quit thinking about it. The final, ghastly
joke of the whole thing is that she’s paying back five
hundred dollars she doesn’t even owe, and there
isn’t any way in the world I can tell her. It’s the five
hundred I took out of Sutton’s wallet that night. So
how can I stop her?
But in the final analysis her sentence will soon be
over, and I’m the one who is doing life. In a little
over two months now she’ll be free and can walk out
of the office for the last time and go on with a life of
her own. I think she and Eddie Something date a lot
now that he’s home from college, and nothing is
hopeless or irrevocable when you’re twenty-one. I’m
the one who couldn’t make it. I had a try-out in the
big leagues, but I didn’t have the stuff, and they sent
Hell Hath No Fury — 203
me back. I’ve found my own level again, and I’m
living with it.
Maybe it’ll be better when she’s gone, and maybe
it’ll be worse. At least I get to see her now. I ask her
if she knows where this paper is, or that paper, and
she says, “Yes, Mr. Madox,” and I look at her,
thinking of that morning a little less than a year ago,
in this same office, when I saw her for the first time,
very fresh and lovely and looking like a longstemmed
yellow rose, and I have to fight down that
almost unbearable longing to cry out to her and ask
her if she ever thinks of it, or remembers it, or the
day Spunky was lost and I held her face in my hands
and kissed her, or the night on the bridge when she
said she loved me.
But I never ask it. There’s no need to, because I
know what she would say.
“No, Mr. Madox.”
Hell Hath No Fury — 204