Hell Hath No Fury by Charles Williams 1953(2)

“What is it?” I asked. “A junk drive?”
“Uh-uh. It’s our club project. We store the stuff in
Mr. Taylor’s old building and every two or three
months a junk man comes and buys the paper. We
sort out the clothes and send bundles.”
That’s nice, I thought. They send bundles. Well,
maybe it keeps them off the streets. We went down a
block beyond the bank and turned right into a cross
street which was only a couple of blocks long. There
wasn’t much here after you got off the main drag. A
small chain grocery stood on the corner, and beyond
that there was a Negro juke joint covered with Coca-

Cola signs. She went on up to the second block and
stopped in front of a building on the right. It was a
boxlike two-storey frame with glass show-windows in
front and vacant lots full of dead brown weeds on
both sides. You could still see the lettering “TAYLOR
HARDWARE” on the windows, but they were flyspecked
and dirty and the place was vacant, and the
door was closed with a big padlock. A “FOR RENT”
sign leaned against the glass down in one corner.
We got out and she fished around in her bag for the
key. Standing up, she wasn’t as tall as the Harper
girl and had none of her long-legged, easy grace, but
she was stacked smoothly and twelve to the dozen
against the contoured retaining-wall of her clothes.
She went around and opened the trunk of the car.
“I expect it’ll take two trips,” she said.
I glanced in. There were two bundles of old
newspapers and magazines tied up with cord, and a
lot of loose clothes. I hefted the papers. They
weren’t over fifty or seventy-five pounds each, so I
gathered them up and asked her to stuff the old
clothes under my arms.
Hell Hath No Fury — 22
She looked up at me with a kittenish smile. “Well,
goodness, I expect to carry something myself. I don’t
look that puny, do I?”
Let it be, I thought. This is a small town. We went
inside. The place was empty except for some old
counters and shelves, and our footsteps rang with a
hollow sound. There was dust everywhere. “We have
to go upstairs,” she said.
The stairs were in the rear. I went up first and I
could hear the high heels clicking after me. All the
windows were closed, and heat lay like a suffocating
blanket across the lifeless air. I could feel sweat
breaking out on my face. The whole second floor was
a jumble of discarded junk, old pieces of furniture,
loose and bundled papers, piles of clothing, cast-off
luggage, and even some old feather mattresses piled
in a corner. A fire marshal would take one look at it,
I thought, and run amok. They’d have a fire here
some day that would really turn the town out. It
wouldn’t take much. Just some turpentine and rags…
“What?” I asked, suddenly aware that she had
come up behind me and said something. I turned.
She was throwing the clothing on a pile. Her face
was flushed with the heat and there were little
beads of perspiration on her upper lip.
“I said you must not know your own strength. You
carried those things all the way up here, and then
forgot you had them. Why don’t you set them
down?”
I was still holding the bundles of papers. “Oh,” I
said.
I threw them down. She was still looking at me,
but she said nothing. It was intensely still, and hot,
and there was an odd feeling of strain in the air.
“Is that all of it?” I asked.
“Yes. That’s all,” she said. “Thanks.”
“You’re welcome.”
“How do you like our town?”
“All right. What I’ve seen of it.” Why did you have
to stand here and talk in this stifling hotbox up
Hell Hath No Fury — 23
under the roof? Her face was expressionless as she
watched me.
“Did you ever live in a small town?” she asked.
“Yes. I grew up in one.”
“Oh? Well, you probably know what they’re like,
then.”
“Sure.”
“Well, maybe we’d better go,” she said. “It’s awful
hot up here, don’t you think?”
“It’s murder.” I nodded for her to go first, and we
started weaving our way through the junk, towards
the stairs.
“I wondered if I was just imagining it. I usually
don’t mind the heat, when I keep my weight down.”
That was the second time she’d thrown it out
there, but we understood each other about the small
town now.
“Why do you want to keep your weight down?” I
asked.
“She looked around at me. “Don’t you think I
ought to?”
“It looks perfect to me.”
“Thank you.”
“Not at all. It was a pleasure.”
“I mean for carrying the stuff up, when Mr.
Harshaw forgot.”
Well, the hell with you, I thought. You just
remember you’re married and I won’t have any
trouble with you. “That’s what I meant,” I said. “It
was a pleasure.”
We went down the stairs. Just as we hit the lower
floor I heard her say, “Oh, darn it. What a mess!” I
looked at her, and she held out a hand covered with
dirt, staring at it disgustedly. She’d forgotten about
the dust and had held on to the railing.
I took out my handkerchief. “Here,” I said. “Let
me.”
“It’s all right,” she said. “I think the water’s still
Hell Hath No Fury — 24
turned on in the washroom. I’ll only be a minute.”
She walked on back to the end of the building and
disappeared into a room walled off in one corner. I
stood there looking around and waiting for her, and
then before I knew it I was thinking about that
boar’s nest of trash and junk upstairs. The place was
a natural firetrap.
I don’t know why I did it; there was no idea or plan
in my mind. But I reached over and wiped my hand
through the dust on a step, and when I saw her
come out of the washroom I started back that way.
“I got some of it, too,” I said, holding out the hand.
There was a window in the washroom, all right, as
I’d thought there would be. It was closed and locked
with an ordinary latch on top of the lower sash.
Before I washed my hands I reached over and took
hold of the latch and unlocked it.
Hell Hath No Fury — 25
4
Why not? In this world you took what you wanted;
you didn’t stand around and wait for somebody to
bring it to you. I sat on the side of the bed stark
naked in the sweltering night, listening to Umlaut
beget Frammis in an age-cracked voice on the other
side of the wall, and thought how easy it would be.
There’d be ten or fifteen thousand dollars or maybe
more lying around in that comic-opera bank for a
man with nerve enough to pick it up. And you could
get away from the rat-race for a long time with that
kind of money, with a brown-eyed girl on the beach
somewhere in the Caribbean, sailing a catboat and
going fishing off the reefs and drinking Cuba Libres
where it’s always afternoon.
Why kid myself? I wasn’t a salesman. And I
couldn’t go back to sea, if I wanted to. I wasn’t
getting any younger, and another whole year was
down the drain. I’d quit two jobs and got fired from
three, and I’d had to get out of Houston in a hurry
after a brawl with a longshoreman over some
turning-basin chippy. We tore up a lot of the fixtures
in a cheap beer joint by the time the thing became
general, and somewhere in the confusion the
longshoreman had his jaw broken with a bottle of
Hell Hath No Fury — 26
Bacardi rum. It wasn’t just an isolated incident,
either; life was just a succession of jams over
floozies of one kind or another.
It had been a little over a year now since the night
I’d got back to the States after eleven months of that
monotonous tanker shuttle between the Persian Gulf
and Japan, with a four-hundred-a-month allotment to
Jerilee, to find she’d shoved off with the bank
account and some boy friend she’d forgotten to tell
me about. I tore my second mate’s ticket into strips
and flushed it down the can in a Port Arthur ginmill
and for a while I seemed to have some purpose in
life, but after I’d had time to think it over a little I
quit looking for them and threw away the gun. It
wasn’t worth it. She was just another bum in a
succession of them, the only difference being that I’d
been married to her.
On the other side of the wall they were piping
Noah over the rail and getting ready for the rain.
Sweat ran down my face and I thought about the
bank to keep from thinking of that Harshaw woman.
Keep her weight down! She could quit leaning it
against me. But what about the bank?
It wasn’t so simple, if you stopped to think about
it. When you break the law you can forget about
playing the averages because you have to win all the
time. Who ever won all the time? Yeah, but the thing
which always trips ‘em is association with other
criminals, and I don’t know any, talkative or
otherwise. An amateur’s got a better chance than
the pro because nobody knows him and he hasn’t got
any clippings in the files. I lay there for hours,
thinking about it.
The next day was Saturday. Harshaw was across
the street at his desk in the loan office all morning
and at noon when they closed it, he came over and
said he was going fishing for three days down at
Aransas Pass.
“I’ll be back on Monday night,” he told Gulick. “If
you run into any snag making out papers for sale,
you can always get hold of Miss Harper.”
Hell Hath No Fury — 27
We didn’t sell anything. The town was jammed
with the usual Saturday-afternoon crowd, but
nobody was looking for a car. I prowled morosely
around the lot and wondered what Gloria Harper did
when she wasn’t working. Just before we closed, the
telephone rang. I answered it.
“Mr. Madox?”
I recognized the voice. So she didn’t go with him, I
thought. “Yes. Madox speaking.”
“This is Mrs. Harshaw. I know you’ll think I’m an
awful pest, but I wonder if I could ask another
favor?”
“Sure. What is it?”
“Mr. Harshaw has gone fishing, and he promised
me a car off the lot while he was gone with ours, but
he forgot to bring it home. I wonder if you’d drive it
out for me when you close up?”
“Sure. How do I get there?”
“Go down Main Street to the bank and turn right.
It’s about three or four blocks beyond the edge of
town. There are a couple of cross streets, I think,
and then a filling station on the left. The next block
is big oak trees on both sides of the street, and only
two houses. Ours is the two-storey one on the righthand
side.”
“Check,” I said. “Which car is it?”
“He said there was a Buick. A coupe.”
“Yes. It’s still here. I’ll bring it out.”
“There’s no hurry. Any time after you close up.
And thanks a lot.”
It was around six when we locked up the cars and
the shack. I told Gulick where I was taking the
coupe, and left my own car on the lot. The place
wasn’t hard to find, after I’d threaded my way
through the double-parked congestion of Saturdayafternoon
Main Street. Beyond the filling station she
had spoken of, the road swung a little to the right as
it entered the oaks. The house itself was back in the
trees and had a big lawn in front and a gravel
driveway running back beside a hedge of oleanders.
Hell Hath No Fury — 28
It was a smaller copy of the old-style southern
plantation house, with a columned porch running
across the front and down one side next to the drive.
I stopped by the side porch and got out. It was
secluded back in here, partly cut off as it was from
the street, with long shadows slanting across the
lawn.
“Hello,” she said.
I glanced around, but didn’t see her until she
opened the screen door and came out on to the
porch. She had on a little-girl sort of summer dress
with puffed-out short sleeves tied with bows, and
was rattling ice cubes in a highball glass. She was
bare-legged and wearing wedgies with grass straps,
and her toenails were painted a flaming red. I don’t
know anything about women’s clothes, but still I was
conscious that she jarred somehow. The teenage
dress didn’t do anything for that over-ripe figure
except to wander on to the track and get run over,
and she looked like a burlesque queen in bobby
socks.
“Oh, hello,” I said. “I left the keys in it.”
“Thanks. It was sweet of you to drive it out for
me.”
“Not at all.”
“How about a drink before you go?”
“Yeah. Sure.”
I followed her inside. The Venetian blinds were
half closed in the living room and a big electric fan
oscillated like a slowly shaking head on the mantel
above the fireplace. She stopped and faced me, and
again I could feel that faint strain in the air.
“Bourbon and water?”
“That’s fine.”
“Push some of those magazines out of the way and
sit down. I’m sorry the place’s in such a mess.” She
turned to go, and then stopped and added, as if it
was an afterthought, “I gave the girl the week-end
off, to visit her folks.”
She went out. It was hot in the room, even with the
Hell Hath No Fury — 29
fan going, and I was conscious of a deep quiet,
unbroken except by the whirring of the fan blades
and now arid then a tinkle of ice against glass out in
the kitchen. I lighted a cigarette and put the match
in a tray. It was heaped up and overflowing with
butts smeared with lipstick. Movie and confession
magazines were scattered over the sofa and lying on
the floor, and I could see the rings left by highball
glasses on the coffee table. Standing there looking
around at the evidence of boredom was like
watching a burning fuse.
She came back in a minute with the drink, and I
saw she’d refilled her own. She sat down in the big
chair across from me with her legs stretched out and
the toes of the wedgies touching each other, and
looked at me with her chin propped on her hand.
“Well, how are you standing the excitement?”
I shrugged. “Maybe it picks up on Saturday night.”
“Yes, it really does. They show two westerns at the
movie instead of one.”
“Sounds pretty rugged.”
“Well, you can always join the Ladies’ Club and
collect junk. There’s a hot pastime.”
“I might have trouble getting past the credentials
committee.”
“I bet you wouldn’t if you approached ‘em one at a
time. Meow.”
“What a way to talk about the Ladies!”
“They’re a bunch of dears.”
I put my glass on the coffee table and walked over
to the front window to look out through the Venetian
blind. The house across the street was a little further
up and you couldn’t see it from here.
“Which one of ‘em lives over there?” I asked.
“Mrs. Gross. She’s the one with fourteen eyes and
party-line ears.”
She put her glass down and walked over and stood
close to me. “Well, what do you think of the view?”
I turned, and we were staring at each other again.
Hell Hath No Fury — 30
“It’s better all the time.”
“Oh, I meant to ask you. Did you have any trouble
finding the place?”
“No,” I said. “I could find it in the dark.”
“Are you sure?” she asked.
I put a hand behind her neck and then brought it
up in back of the ash-blonde curls, holding it there
and pulling her face against mine, hard, as I kissed
her. Her mouth was soft and moist, and she came to
me like a dachshund jumping into your lap. In a
minute she turned her face aside and pushed back.
“You’d better get out.”
“Like hell.”
“I thought you told me you’d lived in a small
town.”
“What of it?”
“Don’t you think that old witch over there watched
you drive in here? And she’s watching right now,
waiting for you to leave.”
I tried to take hold of her again, but she moved
back, pushing at my arms. “Harry, get out!”
I could see she meant it, and somehow I had sense
enough to realize she was right. There was no use
asking for trouble.
“All right,” I said. “But don’t think you can tease
me. I’ll be back.”
She didn’t say anything.
“Well?”
Her face was sullen. “Well?” she said.
I picked up my car at the lot and drove over to the
rooming house. After standing under the shower a
long time, I changed into slacks and T-shirt and
drove down to Main. It was dusk now, with heat
lying motionless and sticky in the streets, and bugs
danced through the beams of weaving headlights. It
was hard finding a parking place, but I finally beat
two other cars to one in front of the bank and sat
there for a while trying to push the sultry weights of
Dolores Harshaw off my mind. She was dangerous in
Hell Hath No Fury — 31
a town like this. The hell with her; I wouldn’t go
back. But wouldn’t I? What about later on? Keeping
the thought of her out of that bleak hotbox of a room
was going to be like trying to dam a river with a
tennis racket.
I shook my head irritably, and stared at the bank.
A light was burning over the vault in the rear, and I
could see the layout of the whole room through the
glass doors in front of me. The over-all depth would
be about fifty feet, and the side door which came in
off the cross street was well back, not over twenty
feet this side of the vault and the door which
probably led into a washroom or closet of some kind.
I turned my head and tried to picture about where
the old Taylor building would be from here. Down
one block, I thought, and two to the right, which
would put it diagonally in front of the bank. That was
about right. About right for what? I cursed and
threw away the cigarette I was smoking and got out
to stand on the sidewalk.
I was too restless and irritable to think of eating,
so I started walking aimlessly up the sidewalk
through the crowd. Up in the next block I went past
the drugstore and as I glanced in through the
window I saw Gloria Harper in front of the magazine
racks. Without stopping to wonder why, I opened the
screen door and went in.
She was still absorbed in the magazines and didn’t
see me.
“Hello,” I said.
She glanced up abruptly. “Oh, hello, Mr. Madox.”
She didn’t smile, but there was nothing unfriendly in
the way she looked at me.
“How about a soda?”
She considered it thoughtfully. “Why, yes. Thank
you.”
She paid the clerk for the magazine and we went
back to one of the booths across from the fountain.
“First,” I said, “I’m sorry about the other day. I
must have had the book open at the wrong place.”
Hell Hath No Fury — 32
The violet eyes glanced up at me, and then became
confused and looked away. “It’s all right,” she said.
“Then you’re not mad at me?”
She shook her head. “Not any more.”
“That’s fine,” I said. “Now we can start even again.
Next time I’ll read the instructions on the bottle.
What do you do around here on Saturday nights?”
“Not much. There’s just the movie. And sometimes
a dance, but not this week.”
“How about going swimming, then?”
“I’d like to, but I couldn’t tonight. I’m babysitting.”
“You must be a big operator, with two jobs.
What’re you trying to do, get rich?”
“No, it’s just in the family. I’m staying with my
sister’s little girl so she and her husband can go to
the movies.”
“Oh. Well, I’ll drive you out there.”
“It’s only five or six blocks.”
“I’ll drive you anyway.”
She smiled. “Well, all right. Thank you.”
I watched her while she finished the soda, thinking
of that odd gravity about everything she did, and the
way she always said “Thank you,” instead of just
“Thanks.” A sweet kid from a nice family, you’d say;
probably teaches a Sunday-school class and goes
steady with some guy in his last year at law school.
The only hitch was—where did Sutton fit in? How
about the way he’d looked at her, with that secret
and very dirty joke of his? It was impossible, and still
there it was.
She told me how to get there and we drove out
Main, going north past the used-car lot. I asked her
a little about herself, and she told me she’d lived
around here most of her life except for a couple of
years away at school. Her mother and father had
moved to California and she was living with her
sister and brother-in-law. I slipped over a couple of
oblique questions, looking for a steady boy friend,
Hell Hath No Fury — 33
but she let them slide off without saying one way or
the other. She didn’t wear any engagement ring,
though. I looked.
It was a small white house on a graveled side
street, complete with a white picket fence and a
young tree in the yard. “Won’t you come in?” she
asked.
Why not? “Sure,” I said. “Thanks.”
There were no street lights, but the moon was
waxing, and higher now, and I could see the dark
shadow of vines growing along the fence and over
the porch. The air was heavy and sweet with
something I hadn’t smelled for a long time, and after
the second breath I knew it was honeysuckle. To
make it perfect, I thought, the gate should drag a
little and need to be listed to open it. It did.
All the lights were off and they were sitting on the
porch steps. When they saw there was somebody
with her, they reached inside the front door and
turned on the porch light. The sister was a slightly
older version of Gloria, a little heavier, maybe, and
having gray eyes instead of the startling violet. They
were friendly, but a little embarrassed, like people
who didn’t get around very much. Gloria introduced
me. His name was Robinson, and he was a slightly
built man around my age with thinning yellow hair
and rimless glasses.
“Mr. Madox is the new salesman at the lot,” Gloria
said.
“And apprentice baby-sitter,” I added, clowning a
little to break the ice. We shook hands.
“Well, you don’t look as if they could overpower
you,” he said, and grinned.
As they went out the gate Mrs. Robinson called
back, “Make Mr. Madox some lemonade, Gloria.”
“Thanks,” I said. “We just had a soda.”
I didn’t notice the child until they had gone. She
was maybe two or four years old or something like
that, curled up in a long nightgown in the porch
swing, a golden-haired girl with big saucer eyes. The
Hell Hath No Fury — 34
whole place, I thought, is as blonde as an oldcountry
smorgasbord.
“This is Gloria Two,” she said. “And this gentleman
is Mr. Madox, honey-lamb.”
I never know what to say to kids. That itchy-kitchycoo
stuff makes me as sick as it probably makes
them, so I just said, “How do you do?” Surprisingly,
she stared back at me as gravely as her aunt and
said, “How do you do?”
Then I thought of the funny name. “Gloria Two?” I
asked.
Gloria Harper smiled. “They named her after me.
And then when I came to live here it was a little
confusing. Mostly we just call her ‘Honey.’“
“Isn’t that confusing too?” I asked.
She stopped smiling. “Why?”
“Doesn’t anybody call you that?”
“No.”
“They should. It’s the color of your hair.”
She shook her head. “It’s just sunburned.”
She took Gloria Two inside to put her to bed. When
she came back I was admiring the water colors on
the walls in the living room. I recognized one of
them as being the wooden bridge over the river, the
one we’d crossed going out to the oil well.
“They’re good,” I said. “Did you do them?”
She nodded. “I don’t have much talent, but it’s
fun.”
“I like them.”
“Thank you,” she said.
We went out and sat down on the porch with our
feet on the steps. A cocker spaniel came around the
corner, looked me over, and jumped into the porch
swing. I handed Gloria a cigarette and we smoked,
not saying much. The honeysuckle vines looked like
patent leather in the moonlight and the night was
heavy with their perfume.
“It’s pretty, isn’t it?” she asked quietly.
“Sometimes when it’s quiet like this you can hear
Hell Hath No Fury — 35
the whip-poor-wills.”
We listened for them and it was very still now, but
we didn’t hear any. “Well,” she said. “They’re kind of
sad anyway.”
“They’re an echo or something. I think the ones
you hear have been dead for a thousand years or
so.”
She turned her head and looked at me. “Yes. I
never thought of it before, but that’s the way they
are.”
Her eyes were large, and they looked black here in
the shadows. “You’re very pretty,” I said.
“Thank you. But it’s just the moonlight.”
“No,” I said. “I wasn’t talking about the lighting.”
She didn’t say anything. I snapped the cigarette and
it sailed across the fence. “Look,” I said. “What’s
with Sutton?”
You could see her tighten up. She was there, and
then she was going away. “I don’t know what you
mean.”
“Well, I guess it isn’t any of my business.”
“Please—“ Her voice was strung out tight and she
was unhappy and scared of something. “It’s—You’re
just imagining things, Mr. Madox.”
I started to say something, but just then a car
pulled up in front of the gate and stopped. A boy in
white slacks got out and came up the walk. He was
about twenty-one and his name was Eddie
Something and he was home from school for the
summer. The three of us sat on the steps and talked
for a while, about how hot it was and about school
and about how many of them were going right into
the Army.
“What outfit were you in, Mr. Madox?” Eddie
Something asked.
“Navy. I got out on a medical and went into the
merchant marines.” I thought of the “Mr. Madox”
and the fact that we were talking about two armies
ten years apart. What was I doing here, talking to
these kids? Getting off the steps, I flipped the
Hell Hath No Fury — 36
cigarette away and said, “Well, I’ll see you around.”
“You don’t have to go, do you?” Gloria asked.
“Yeah,” I said. I went out and got in the car and
rammed it towards the highway, full of a black
restlessness and angry at everything. Driving around
didn’t do any good. I drove out to the river and went
swimming, and when I came back to town it was still
only ten o’clock. The rooming house was
thunderously silent. Even the old couple in the next
room had gone somewhere. I mopped the sweat off
my face and tried to sit still on the bed.
Well? she said. She sat on the chair with her legs
stretched out and the toes of the wedgies touching
and stared at me, sulky-eyed, over ripe, and spoiling,
and said, Well?
Well?
Everything was distorted perhaps because of the
moonlight. Shadows were swollen and dead black
and nothing looked the same as it did in the day. The
filling station was a hot oasis of light, but I was
behind it, walking fast along the alley. Beyond it I
crossed the road and went into the trees. I pushed
through the oleander hedge and stood for a moment
in its shadow, looking at the house and the lawn. The
only car in the drive was the Buick coupe, right
where I’d left it, and all the windows in the house
were dark. I went up the porch.
The screen door was unlatched.
A little light came in through the Venetian blinds
in the living room. There was no one in it. I located
the stairs and went up. The short hallway at the top
had two doors in it and a window at the end. One of
the doors was open.
She was lying on the bed next to a window looking
out over the back yard. From the waist up she was in
deep shadow, but moonlight slanted in across the
bottom of the bed and I could see the gleam of that
tiny chain around her
“Harry,” she said, her voice a little thick with the
whisky. “You found the way, didn’t you?”
Hell Hath No Fury — 37
What’s so wonderful about it? I thought. Dogs do.
Hell Hath No Fury — 38
5
“Harry?”
“What?”
“You want another drink?”
“No.”
“Why not?”
“I’ve had enough. I’ve got a headache.”
“It couldn’t be the whisky. It’s straight Bourbon. It
wouldn’t give you a headache.”
Nothing but the best, I thought. “All right. It’s not
the whisky.”
“I like you,” she said. “You don’t drink much, but
you’re all right. Harry, you know what?”
“What?”
“You’re all right.”
“You said that.”
“Well, Godsakes, I’ll say it again if I want to.
You’re all right. You’re sweet. You’re a big ugly
bastard with a face that’d stop a clock, but you’re
sweet. You know what I mean?”
“No.” I lighted a cigarette and lay on my back
staring up at the ceiling. It must be nearly midnight.
Hell Hath No Fury — 39
My head throbbed painfully and very slowly, like a
big flywheel turning over, and the taste of whisky
was sour in my mouth. She must bathe in cologne, I
thought; the room was drenched with it. “Harry?”
“What is it?”
“You don’t think I’m fat, do you?”
“Of course not.”
“You wouldn’t kid ‘ninnocent young girl, would
you?”
“No.” I turned and looked at her. Moonlight from
the window had moved up the bed and now it fell
diagonally across her from the waist up to the big
spread-out breast which rocked a little as she shook
the ice in her glass. I thought of a full and slightly
bruised peach beginning to spoil a little. She was
somewhere between luscious and full-bloom and in
another year or so of getting all her exercise lying
down and lifting the bottle she’d probably be blowzy.
“Well?” she said sarcastically. “Maybe I ought to
turn on the light.”
“You asked me a question. Did you want it
answered or didn’t you?”
She giggled. “Oh, don’t be so touchy. I was just
kidding you. I don’t mind. Pour me another drink.”
She didn’t need any more, but I reached down
beside the bed for the bottle. Anything to get her to
shut up, I thought. The bottle was empty.
“There’s not any more,” I said.
“The hell there’s not. What became of it?”
“Maybe it leaks,” I said wearily.
“Nuts. We got to have a drink.” She sat up in bed
and climbed out unsteadily, whisky-and-cologne
smelling and sexy, bosom aswing, and humming
“You’d Be So Easy To Love,” under her breath. “I got
some more hid in the kitchen. Have to keep it hid
from him because he don’t drink and won’t let me,
when he’s home. Him and his lousy ulcers.”
I heard her bump into something in the living room
and swear. She had a bos’n’s vocabulary. My head
Hell Hath No Fury — 40
felt worse and I wondered why I didn’t get out of
there. She was already on the edge of being sloppy
drunk, kittenish one minute and belligerent the next.
God knows I’ve always had some sort of affinity for
gamey babes, but she was beginning to be a little
rough even for me. She had a lot of talent, but it was
highly specialized and when you began to get up to
date in that field you were wasting your time just
hanging around for the conversation. You could do
without it.
In a few minutes she came back carrying what
looked like a tray of ice cubes and another bottle of
whisky. She set the ice cubes on the dresser and I
could see her fumbling around on the top of it for
something.
“Harry, we’re going to have a drink,” she said
thickly.
“Good old Harry ... Harry is a girl’s best friend…
Oh, where’d I put those dam cigarettes? Harry,
switch on that light, will you? I got to have a smoke.”
I reached up and turned on the reading lamp. She
found what she was looking for and turned around,
the cigarette hanging out of her mouth and that gold
chain around her ankle, looking at me with a lazy,
half-drunken smile.
“Harry, you don’t think I’m fat, do you?”
Here we go again, I thought. “No,” I said.
She smiled again. “Well, you sure ought to know.”
She had the bottle of whisky in her hands and was
trying to twist the cap off. She paused for a moment,
apparently thinking hard about something, and
laughed. “Say, you really had a nerve, didn’t you?”
“Why?”
“Coming into the house the way you did. And right
into my room.”
Maybe it was risky, I thought. I might have got
caught in the traffic.
“What would you of done if I’d screamed?”
“I don’t know,” I said. “Run, I suppose.”
Hell Hath No Fury — 41
“But you didn’t think I would, did you?”
“I didn’t know.”
“But you was pretty sure of it, wasn’t you?” There
was a little edge to her voice.
“I told you I didn’t know.”
“The hell you didn’t.” She quit working on the
bottle and glared at me. “I know what you thought.
And you know what?”
“What?”
“I don’t give a damn. What do you know about
that?”
“Oh, knock it off,” I said.
“I know what you think, all right.”
“You said that.”
“Think I’m some lousy tramp that you can walk
right into her room, will you? Well, I’ll tell you what
you can do—“
“You’re drunk,” I said. “Why don’t you shut up?”
“Shut up, will I? Why don’t you make me?”
“Who hasn’t?” I said.
The bottle slid out of her hands. She picked up the
tray of ice cubes and let fly. It bounced off my ribs
and ice slid all over me. I got off the bed and started
for her. She was a sight, arm drawn back and
bristling with drunken rage and as nude as a
calendar girl. I grabbed her arm and swung her, and
she shot backwards and fell across the bed. All the
fight went out of her and she crumpled and began to
cry.
“Harry,” she sobbed, turning on her back and
looking up at me with her eyes swimming.” Where
you going, Harry?”
“Nuts,” I said.
The moon was almost down now, and the streets
were deserted and dark with shadow. Two blocks
away on Main a car went past now and then, but
here beside the old Taylor building there was no
light or movement. I stopped and stared at it, trying
to fight off the disgust and the headache and escape
Hell Hath No Fury — 42
the cloying perfume.
Across the weed-filled vacant lot on this side, next
to the cross street, I could just make out the small
window at the rear, the one I had unlocked. It might
be weeks or months before anybody discovered it
and fastened the latch. I had plenty of time to make
up my mind about it, but what was I waiting for?
Didn’t I know what was going to happen as surely as
sunrise if I went on living in the same town with that
sexy lush?
Oh, sure, I’d stay away from her, all right. Didn’t I
always? What was my batting average so far in
staying out of trouble when it was baited with that
much tramp? It was an even zero, and I didn’t see
anything in the situation here that promised I’d
improve very much. And the way she soaked up the
booze, and as crazy as she was when she was drunk,
she was about as safe to be mixed up with in a town
like this as a rattlesnake. You didn’t know what
she’d do.