Cancel All Our Vows by John D. MacDonald Read Free Book Online Page A

drowned in the Coral Sea and all of life stopped, the way a clock will stop just before striking the hour. There was numbness, and an automatic cunning. The cunning brought Ellis, who married his deadened bride and took her back to Fall River, to the old house smelling of sachetand furniture polish. It brought her Ellis, and brought her two children, and brought her here at last to another old house in a strange city, to a time in her life when, after the deadness and the not-caring, life was coming back in a new and painful form, making her want something wild and discordant and sweetly rotten-ripe—before it was much too late.
    She put the yellow dress on and settled it properly on her shoulders and the slimness of her hips. She looked in a mirror and was glad she had bought the dress. She did her hair and her nails and her lips, and then Ellis came out of the bathroom, scrubbed and brisk and confident and ready to go. In the car on the way to the club he had tried, again, to get her promise to behave during the evening. She had said, “Yes, dear,” tonelessly, over and over, until he gave up in silent disgust.
    She wanted holiday. Ballrooms and wine and a molten moonlight. She wanted around her the witty and incredibly beautiful people of festive cinema. And so she sat with her small hands folded passive in her lap while Ellis drove her toward a tribal conclave, toward thick sweaty bodies and suburban humor.
    She saw Ellis become increasingly nervous on the terrace as they awaited the arrival of the Wyants. She sat and sipped her drink and wondered what on earth she was doing here with this man who smiled too broadly and uncertainly at waiters—and at nothing at all.… She rubbed the rim of her glass with one fingertip and played a child’s game. I shall grant your wish, Princess. How would you like him to go, Princess? All at once, with a little puff of evil-smelling smoke? Or just steadily melting, so that at last nothing is left but the Cheshire mustache, and with one final twitch that will go too.
    “What are you grinning at?” Ellis demanded crossly.
    “I’m practicing my best smile, darling. And you better put yours on too, and tie the ends neatly. Because here they come. Like a refrigerator ad, with automatic defroster. The new lumpen-proletariat of the preferred stock issue. A Viking virgin dressed by Saks, escorted by her big brother-husband, smelling of Russian leather that comes in manly bottles. And …”
    Ellis had bounded up, welcoming smile in place, and out of the corner of his mouth he said, “Stop babbling, dammit!”
    They came and the usual words were said and she sat there pretending she was a robot. Very cleverly designed. The Rent-a-Wife service. Replace in Kompact Kontainer when not in use. Plug into any AC outlet. It walks, it talks, it moves its eyes. Take one home tonight. Go to your nearest …
    And she turned her head and looked squarely into the sharply inquisitive pale grey eyes of a stranger who was calling himself Fletcher Wyant. And those eyes, which had a tantalizing familiarity, seemed to look down into hers and see a little shadow box where a woman stood nude in a flood of sonorous music. The eyes saw too much and knew too much.
    And suddenly good intentions were forgotten and she became a slat-thin kid again, climbing to the tallest branch of the live oak to sway there in the wind, to impress the boy who had moved into the tourist cabin next door. She said things she knew were inane, and from far back in her mind she watched the effect of her words and actions on the three of them.
    She watched Jane bristle, and stake out her claim.
    And yet, it made little difference. The directionless tendrils of the green vine had found target. She knew he was brutal, and sensitive, and inquisitive, and that he felt that same oddness of being out of the proper time and place as she did.
    It had been inevitable that it would happen, somewhere, somehow, soon.
    Having it happen this way