Neighbors: A Novel Page 17

  But it was Ramona who appeared there. Notwithstanding his great joy at what he believed Elaine's deliverance, this latest event reacquainted him with very negative feelings.

  "What are you doing there?" he cried.

  She grinned triumphantly down at him in silence. He saw that her turban was off for the first time since he had greeted her from the other side of this very door. Funny, he had assumed that her hair would be woolly, wiry, springy; instead it looked lank and lifeless. By contrast, her features were stronger than ever.

  While he stared at her the door opened. It was Enid.

  As he entered the house he asked indignantly: "What's that woman doing here?"

  "Huh?"

  "The person from next door!"

  "I know where she's from," said Enid, "but doesn't she have a name?"

  "What's she doing in our bedroom?"

  Enid was still wearing Elaine's robe. She shook her head and said: "What difference does it make? You had gone."

  "And she was lurking around outside, trying to get in again, wasn't she?" Keese sneered. "And you fell for it. There's nothing wrong over at their house. There's no reason why she had to come over here and apply for entrance like some waif from the storm. In fact, Harry's over there wondering where she is. He accused me of doing away with her."

  "Ah," said Enid.

  "You know how they love to whip me up, but I'm learning how to deal with them."

  "Good."

  Keese showed his teeth. "What's she doing here?"

  "I thought the simplest way to handle the situation was to let her in and be done with it."

  "Yes," he said sardonically, "your old strategy of the early evening, as I remember, and it was certainly successful then!"

  They stood in the entrance hall. He was about to go upstairs, but Enid drew him into the living room. "Be decent, Earl. As long as she's here, why not let her rest for a while. She's been up all night."

  "What do you think I've been doing?" Keese asked with great feeling. "Not only have I not had any sleep at all, but I didn't really have any dinner. But the deprivations are not the least of it: I've been fighting a good deal of the night. I'm almost half a century old, and I've been taking and giving punches like a kid. I wouldn't have believed this possible twelve short hours ago."

  Enid drew him to the couch, sat him down, took a place near him, and looking soberly into his eyes, said: "You're bearing up under it amazingly well."

  "I'll say this," said Keese. "I've given more than I've got. I don't mind admitting I'm proud of myself."

  "You certainly should be."

  He considered the possibility that she was mocking him. "I'm amazed that you don't mention my blood pressure."

  "Well," said Enid, "it is yours, after all. It would be arrogant for me to say much about it."

  Keese still wasn't clear about her motives. "Now," he said, "I don't really want to probe too deeply into the matter, but I gather that the ring which was proved so troublesome to Elaine is in her possession."

  "I don't know," said Enid. "I know only the latest version of the story, which I passed on to you."

  Keese rose from the couch. "That's a good deal more important than your friend Ramona," said he. "I'm going up to talk to Elaine—and I don't care whether she is asleep. This problem must be resolved and concluded immediately."

  He went upstairs and knocked at Elaine's door and, a moment later, without an invitation, entered the darkened room. "Excuse me, Elaine," he said, going to the window. He raised the shade. But he had never liked the niggard look of early morning light in a bedroom unless it came from the east.

  Elaine was pretending to be asleep: her imposture could be detected from the stress lines at her eyes.

  "Come on, dear," Keese said jollily, "you're squinting."

  Elaine began to speak reproachfully even before opening her eyelids. "I'm just trying to get to sleep after that awful night."

  "Elaine," Keese said, taking a generous seat on the bed where it was available, down near the foot, "I want to settle this matter about the ring."

  "Well," Elaine said, her two hands appearing at the top of the bedclothes, as if they were independent of her head, "it is a difficult problem. My friend doesn't know what to do."

  "Your friend?"

  Elaine stared. "The one who took the ring. She was invited to tea at the dean's house, you see, and at one point she used the bathroom, which has a second door, like ours, which leads into a bedroom. She opened this door and she went into that bedroom and she saw a dressing table there and she went to it and she saw a sapphire ring there and she took it."

  Keese nodded judiciously. "Your friend—an impulse suddenly came over her? An ungovernable impulse?"

  Elaine blinked in impatience. "How should I know? Perhaps she's simply a crook at heart."

  Keese gasped. "No, no."

  Elaine grimaced. "How'd you know? Are you acquainted with this person?"

  He drew back. "No, certainly not. But what would a crook be doing as a friend of yours?"

  She peered at him. "You think it's me, don't you?"

  "No," said Keese. "What a thing to say!"

  "But you're not really sure, are you?" Elaine asked sternly. "You were sure about Harry, so certain you punched him in the eye, but you're not sure you can believe or disbelieve in me at this moment."

  "Please don't bring Harry into this. We've had enough of him! Look, let's forget about who took the ring. That matters not at all. A student could be expelled for such an act. I'm sure your friend is aware of that. My advice to her would be to return the ring. I don't think, frankly, that she should trust the dean to be forgiving. Maybe he'd be and maybe not. Therefore the most effective procedure would be to return the ring by mail, anonymously. Restitution having been made, I think we could count on all concerned to forget the incident."

  Elaine's expression brightened. "Say, that's an excellent idea! Give me the phone, will you?"

  The instrument was on a lower level of the bedside table. Keese lifted it out and gave it to his daughter.

  Elaine vigorously worked the dial. The other party must have answered on the first ring, for she spoke before her finger had quite been removed from the last aperture.

  "Say, here's an idea!" she said brightly into the mouthpiece. "Mail it back." She hung up.

  Keese was amazed. But was it not too blatant to be a pose? If she really intended to fool him, wouldn't she have been a bit more painstaking?

  "Elaine," he said, hand on chin, "will your friend understand that message?"

  "Oh, sure," was her breezy answer.

  "One moment," said he. "I am an easygoing sort, as you should be the first to know, but—"

  "Daddy!"

  "Here's my point," said Keese. "You share an apartment with three others. How can you be sure who would answer? Two: even if the right person answered, how would she know what you meant when you said as little as you did?"

  "She'd know," said Elaine, sliding down in bed and pulling the covers over her head.

  "I'm sorry, Elaine," Keese said, pulling the covers down to expose her face, "I may be doing you an injustice, but that answer's not enough for me."

  Elaine's face suddenly seemed to have become a decade younger. It looked as though she might stick out her tongue. But instead she wailed: "Why are you doing this to me?"

  "Oh, it's to you, is it?" asked Keese, in a rush of self-pity.

  Elaine reared up, seized the telephone from the bedside table, and gave it to her father. "Dial this number," she demanded. He did so.

  Hardly had the last digit been signified when a young woman's voice came through the instrument: "Scotty Muldoon."

  "Is that Scotty Muldoon?" asked Elaine.

  "Yes."

  "Ask her: 'Did Elaine Keese call just now with a message?'"

  Keese put this question, and Scotty Muldoon said: "Yes."

  "Ask her," said Elaine, "whether she understood it."

  "Did you understand it?
"

  Keese asked, and Scotty Muldoon said: "No," and hung up.

  "Well, there you are," said Elaine, as though her bluff had been successful.

  "There I'm nowhere," said Keese. "Scotty Muldoon just said no."

  Elaine laughed heartily. "That's Scotty all right. That's her way. You know the type."

  "But I don't know Scotty Muldoon," Keese cried.

  Elaine raised her hands in exasperation. "Gawd! O.K., call this number—"

  "Who's this?"

  "Rags Rafferty. He knows Scotty Muldoon better than anyone in the world. He can tell you whether it is her custom to say no when she means yes and so on."

  "Elaine!" Keese cried. "I don't want to have to call half the world!"

  "You have impugned my veracity," said Elaine. "At least be decent enough to hear the evidence on my side."

  Keese nodded stoically and dialed the number. This time the answer was not immediate. Indeed, the bell having rung a dozen times, Keese felt he had met his obligation, and he was on the point of hanging up when a young male voice came on to say, flatly: "Yeah?"

  "Rags Rafferty?" Keese asked.

  "Who says so?"

  "Elaine Keese."

  "Oh, that bitch," said the voice, and the line went dead.

  Keese furiously redialed the number, and when the young man came on Keese said: "I'm her father. I'm sure you didn't know that."

  "Whose father?" asked the voice, in such an innocent intonation that Keese was almost convinced the boy had forgotten the call of six seconds before.

  "Elaine's."

  "Sorry, sir, I don't know any Elaine except my mother, and you're obviously not my grandfather, who is not among the living."

  "You're not the same fellow I spoke to earlier?"

  "No, sir, not on this telephone."

  "Are you Rags Rafferty?"

  "No, sir."

  "Do you know him?"

  "No, sir."

  "Sure?" asked Keese, shrugging for Elaine's benefit.

  "I'm sure of only one thing," said the young man.

  "And that is—?"

  "That you can kiss my ass." He hung up.

  "Well," Keese said accusingly to Elaine, "that only earned me more vicious abuse." He hung up and lifted the phone from his lap and banged it down on the bedside table. "This hoax was without purpose. Whoever stole the ring is not my concern. Whoever did will not suffer for what was obviously the crazy impulse of the moment, if she mails it back to the owner." He stood up. "That's my statement on the matter."

  Elaine narrowed her eyes at him. Her forefinger came out of the blankets to crook and summon him to close quarters. When he had reached her she gave him a kiss on the cheek and she said: "Thanks, Daddy."

  Keese was almost overwhelmed. He suppressed a sob and gained the hallway. One of his problems was apparently solved. He looked down the hall at the closed door of the master bedroom and his heart was warm. Let Ramona get a morning's sleep if she wanted it.

  He descended to the ground floor and looked for Enid. He found her in the kitchen, writing on a notepad.

  "I gave Elaine an idea that will work," he said, "if she'll use it. I think she will, though there was some preliminary dodging and feinting, with a cast of bogus characters. It was simply this: the ring can be mailed back anonymously. Of course she denies taking it."

  "And you believe her?"

  "I think we should give our daughter the benefit of the doubt," Keese said pompously. "As to the motive for the act, call it some temporary aberration. The best of us will have a few of those before we're dead!" He was attempting to be jolly, to put the best face on it.

  "You're speaking of yourself?"

  "Not really," said Keese.

  "Oh." Enid flung her hands up and closed her eyes. It was really the most effective gesture of noncommittal he had ever seen.

  "Look," said Keese, "there are people who kill and maim and torture and enslave. There are people who stink and make loathsome noises and scratch themselves and writhe and cavort and are ugly and awkward and rude. All of these are worse than someone who acts badly once in a very great while owing to an ungovernable impulse."

  Enid shrugged and began to leave the kitchen.

  "Stop!" Keese commanded. "Why are you leaving?"

  "If you have reached a consideration of universal principles I feel redundant," said she.

  "Don't be ridiculous."

  "Well, what do you want of me?"

  Keese squinted. "I decided to let Ramona have her forty winks, you'll be happy to know. Not that there is any reason why she deserves them. With an entire empty house just across the yard—not to mention her husband. And the dog—you never answered the question about that animal." He decided to make a stand there, and he maintained his defiant, quizzical stare until Enid responded.

  "The dog is all right."

  "Oh. Well, I feel I owe Ramona precisely nothing. But the relief I felt when I had solved Elaine's problem—" He realized he was thinking out loud, a poor procedure for anyone who has enemies. "Wait here a minute, will you?" He went down the stairs and explored the lowest level of his house. He returned to the kitchen and said to Enid: "The dog is not in the basement."

  "No."

  "Then how can you say he's all right?"

  "It was just a figure of speech."

  "I doubt it," said Keese. "You don't speak loosely, Enid. I've always admired you for your succinctness."

  She smiled faintly.

  "I do," said Keese, "and that's far from being all the story. I admire you in many ways."

  Enid smiled more broadly. "Your purpose is to flatter me into finding the dog for you?"

  Keese winked and asked slyly: "Is that so bad?" In the early years of marriage he had been wont to jolly her in this fashion. Somehow the technique had been put aside: perhaps because it was the sort of thing that did not age to advantage.

  But Enid seemed touched by it now. "What a nice thing to say," said she. "You're an interesting man, Earl. Your principles are quite as good as most, and your methods may be eccentric but they are always founded in rectitude."

  "That's not the preface to an obituary, is it?" Keese asked, not altogether lightheartedly. He began to regret his praise for her way of speaking. It sounded as though she might go too far. "I'll explain my concern: those people have a three-phased tactic, like an army, really. First the dog is sent in to scout the territory. Then Ramona launches the first assault. While the adversary is reeling from this attack, Harry arrives with the lethal strike. Then all join together for the coup de grâce."

  "Oh, you're back to that subject."

  "I can't get far from it," said Keese. "These neighbors have brought out certain traits I didn't know I had. That may be all to the good, mind you. I am merely trying to understand it."

  "They didn't succeed with you!" Enid said, moving closer towards the door with every syllable.

  "Ramona managed to get my very bed away from me!" Keese vehemently admitted. "I may have immobilized Harry, but while my back was turned she made her successful move." He grinned. "Well, hell, let her rest—on her laurels. She deserves them! I failed to protect my rear: it's as simple as that."

  "O.K.," said Enid. "Then we've got that settled." She escaped.

  Keese made no attempt to stop her again. He was satisfied that his version of the outcome was fair. He was not, at the moment, thinking of the dog, but without warning a sense of where it could be found came to him: it was with Ramona. Not only had his bedroom been taken from him, but it had also been transformed into a kennel.

  He left the kitchen at a brisk pace and soon arrived before the door of the master bedroom. His knock was a little drumroll, followed by two separate explosions.

  He was answered by a rumbling growl.

  "Go away, Earl," said Enid's voice behind the door. "You can't do any good here."

  "Good?" he asked. "You fill my room with enemies and lock the door against me, and you talk of good?"

  "You've
got the wrong slant on things," said Enid.

  Then Ramona's voice was heard. "You had your chance, Earl. Now go away."

  He threw himself, spread-eagle, against the door, cursing. In an instant he felt a massive vibration as the dog, Baby, assaulted the wood panel from the other side. The beast would be a formidable foe, especially if it considered itself to be at bay. Unlike Harry he kept no weapons. Fool that he was, he had assumed he would never need one. He despised his harmless self of old. Were he to do it all over again he would go everywhere armed to the teeth: you could never know when you might be jumped, and taking revenge at some later time was never really satisfactory. Timing was all. A minute passes and the world is changed in every respect. The landscape out the window looks the same, but every atom of it is different.