Fury on Sunday by Richard Matheson Read Free Book Online Page B

sporting on the cloth.
    “Place looks a mess,” he said.
    She didn’t answer. She kept pouring whiskey.
    “Guess I’d better have the woman in Monday instead of Tuesday,” he said.
    She finished pouring her drink.
    “How about another?” he said.
    “Another what?” she said and sat down. Her nightgown slipped up over her knees and his throat moved. She looked up at him and pulled the gown up further, pleased at the mottled color it brought.
    “You look like a cow in heat,” she said idly.
    “Maybe I’ll have one too,” he said, trying to ignore her remark.
    “One what?” she asked.
    She always asked questions like that. He knew very well she was aware of what he was talking about. But unless he named his object in so many words, unless he used the noun, she would impale him on a question he felt obliged to answer.
    “I’ll have a drink,” he said in a surly voice.
    “Sure, why not?” she said. “Drink up, dear one.”
    He didn’t know how to take that sort of remark either. He rarely knew how to take her remarks. They always had the earmarks of a trap he might fall into. It made him nervous analyzing each of her remarks before he answered them. But he had to or else he wouldn’t know what to say. And, anyway, he invariably stumbled and said the wrong thing and, suddenly, her scorn, or her mocking laughter, would surround him. Or, worse, her raw, nerve-taut fury would lash out at him and make him afraid. That was it. He was afraid of her.
    He poured a little whiskey into a glass and squirted a lot of soda in after it. He knew he shouldn’t have any. But he didn’t want to goback to bed and he had to have some excuse to stay with her. That was the situation too. He had to have an excuse to stay with his own wife. As he made the drink he looked at his watch. It was nearly three o’clock.
    He sat down in a chair across from her.
    “Couldn’t you sleep either?” he asked, trying to be amiable.
    “Sure,” she said. “Sure, I could sleep. I’m in there now. I’m sound asleep. This is my astral projection drinking whiskey on a Sunday morning. Astral projection of Jane Sheldon drinking whiskey. Corpus slumberi of Jane Sheldon asleep in bed, dead to sorry old world.”
    And what did you answer to such a remark? He insulted himself by smiling a little at her, sheepishly. He retained the smile but the muscles of his stomach knew, and they tied a knot that made him grunt and bend over in pain. A little of his drink spilled over the edge of the glass.
    “Oh, for Christ’s sake, go to bed,” Jane snapped. “Don’t subject me to your goddamn attacks!”
    He straightened up and tried to blink away the tears of pain that shimmered in his eyes.
    “It’s nothing,” he said.
    She turned away with a rustle on the chair, and she stared into the dark kitchen. There, too, she thought, was the result of this so glorious party: the uneaten sandwiches, the drinks all watery with melted ice cubes, the glasses and dishes broken, the crumpled napkins smudgy with lipstick wiped from many a guilty visage.
    A hardly audible chuckle sounded in her throat, a brief light of amusement took away the haggard dullness in her eyes. It never failed to amuse, if only for seconds—this spectacle of passion unleashed, snuffing about like a freed puppy, seeking out the hydrants of excitement. These parties designed and executed for the sole purpose of escape.
    “What’s funny?” he asked, half faithful in reaction to her smile, half afraid that she was laughing at him.
    Her eyes turned to him slowly, the light gone, the flat dispassion back.
    “You’re funny,” she said.
    And how did you answer that? His throat moved. His face, for one unguarded moment, flinted and was the face of a man. But therewas no mind of a man behind the mask and the old will-less convolutions returned to his face.
    “Why?” he asked. “Why am I funny?”
    She just looked at him.
    “Nothing,” she said. “Forget it. Ignore it. Cancel