Deep Water by Patricia Highsmith Read Free Book Online Page A

to the house, Melinda had been there and all hell had broken loose. Ralph had told her what he had said. Melinda had screamed at Vic, "It's the most 'stupid—vulgar—idiotic' thing I've ever heard of!" Vic took her vituperation calmly. He knew she was furious probably because Ralph had shown himself a coward. Vic felt that he could have written their conversation. Ralph: "I 'know' it isn't true, darling, but it's obvious he doesn't want me hanging around any more, so I thought —" Melinda: "I don't care what he wants! All right, if you're too much of a coward to face up to him—" And Melinda would have realized, during their talk, that he must have said the same thing to Joel Nash.
           "Does Ralph really think I killed McRae?" Vic asked.
           "Of course he doesn't. He just thinks you're an ass. Or else out of your head."
           "But he doesn't think it's funny." Vic shook his head regretfully. "That's too bad."
           "What's funny about it?" Melinda was standing in the living room, her hands on her hips and her moccasined feet wide apart. "Well—I suppose you'd have to hear it the way I said it to find it funny."
           "Oh, I see. Did Joel find it funny?"
           "Apparently he didn't. Seems to have scared him out of town."
           "That's what you wanted to do, wasn't it?"
           "Well, yes, frankly."
           "And Ralph, too. You wanted to scare him, didn't you?"
           "I found them both terrible bores and terribly beneath you I think. So Ralph's scared, too?"
           "He's not scared. Don't be silly. You don't think anyone would believe a story like that, do you?"
           Vic put his hands behind his head and leaned back in the arm chair. "Joel Nash must have believed something. He certainly disappeared, didn't he? I don't think it was very bright of him, but then I never thought he was bright."
           "No. Nobody's bright but you."
           Vic smiled at her good-naturedly. "What did Joel say to you?" he asked, and he saw from her shifting of her position, the way she flung herself down on the sofa, that Joel Nash had said nothing to her. "What did Ralph say?"
           "That he thought you were decidedly unfriendly and he thought—"
           "Decidedly unfriendly. How unusual. I was decidedly bored, Melinda, decidedly tired of wining and dining bores several times a week and sitting up all night with them, decidedly tired of listening to drivel, and decidedly tired of their thinking that I didn't know or care what they were up to with you. It was decidedly dull."
           Melinda stared at him in surprise for a long moment, frowning, her mouth turned stubbornly down at the corners. Then suddenly she put her face down in her hands and let the tears come. Vic came to her and put his hand on her shoulder. "Honey, is it worth crying about? Are Joel Nash and Ralph worth crying about?"
           She flung her head up. "I'm not crying over them. I'm crying over the injustice."
           "'Sic'," Vic murmured involuntarily.
           "Who's sick?"
           He sighed, really trying to think of something to say to comfort her. No use saying, "'I'm' still here, I love you." She wouldn't want him now, perhaps never would. And he didn't want to be a dog in the manger. He wouldn't object to her having a man of some stature and self-respect, a man with some ideas in his head, as a lover, Vic thought. But he was afraid Melinda would never choose that kind or that that kind would never choose her. Vic could visualize a kind of charitable, fair-minded, civilized arrangement in which all three of them might be happy and benefit from contact with one another. Dostoyevsky had known what he meant. Goethe might have understood, too.
           "You know, just the other day in the paper," Vic began conversationally, "I read a piece about a ménage à trois in Milan. Of course I don't know what kind of people