This Sweet Sickness by Patricia Highsmith Read Free Book Online Page A

walk.
    â€œGood evening, Mr. Kelsey!” she sang out. “Did you know your friend Mr. Carmichael’s going to move in with us?”
    David’s first thought was that Wes and Laura had really decided to part. Then he remembered Wes’s words of the other evening. “He is? When?”
    â€œTomorrow evening, he says, if it’s okay with Mrs. Mac. I just spoke to Mr. Carmichael. He was—Well, I ran into him on Main, and you see he’d asked me to tell him when there was a vacancy. He’s going to call her first thing tomorrow.”
    â€œI see.” David could smell some scent that she wore, a pleasant scent, more interesting than he would have expected her to use.
    She lingered, her smiling face turned up to his. “He says he won’t be bringing much stuff with him. He says it’s just going to be an annex to his house. Like a den. He says funny things sometimes.”
    David nodded, smiling slightly. “It’ll be nice to have him around.” He waved a hand as he walked away.
    He had had no objective when he went out, but now he walked in the direction of Main Street. It’s none of your business , he told himself, before any of his jumbled thoughts became defined. And maybe he was suspecting things. But he knew he wasn’t. He had seen the way Wes looked at women on the street, in Michael’s Tavern where he and Wes sometimes went for a beer, even in the factory. Wes bragged of his success with women, any kind of women, he said. “Act relaxed, as if you’re not anxious about anything, but approach them directly,” Wes had said. “It’s a mistake to think women like a subtle approach. Bowl ’em over with a shocking request!” That night David had laughed, amused. Now David realized that what upset him, what depressed him, was that Wes wasn’t better than he was, that he would fool around with other women, be false to his wife, just like all the other second-rate people who made up the bulk of the human race. David remembered that his respect for Wes had risen when Wes showed him a paper on inert gases he had written just after school. Wes could still do some brilliant work in chemistry, if he didn’t waste the next few years at Cheswick. But there would be that blotch, perhaps with Effie Brennan, perhaps with some other woman or women. It seemed inevitable to David that Wes would lose his self-respect, and that this would affect his work, if only because guilt would interfere with his imagination. Or did that make sense? Did anything?
    It’s none of your business , an inner voice said again, and David stopped a few yards away from the pink-yellow lights of Michael’s Tavern. Then he turned around and started back in the direction of his room. He would read a geology book tonight, he thought, and forget about the lot of them.
    Wes arrived at six the next evening at Mrs. McCartney’s, with a suitcase, two strapped bundles of books, and a typewriter. He told David he had left the car with Laura, on the assumption he could ride to and from work with David, and David said of course he could. To avoid disturbing Mr. Harris and Mr. Muldaven at the dinner hour, David had asked Mrs. McCartney if she would mind asking the two men to move to another table, because he knew Mr. Carmichael would prefer to eat at his table. Mrs. McCartney said she would be glad to. She was already prepared to like Mr. Carmichael, simply because he was a friend of David Kelsey, her best roomer.
    Effie Brennan was a little nervous at the table that evening, flanked by David and Wes, but she looked happy. She wore a blue and black striped blouse of satiny material that David had heard her say was her best. And she wore her pink coral earrings.
    â€œI don’t think this is bad at all,” Wes said cheerfully as he poured ketchup on his meat loaf.
    â€œI don’t think you’ll get fat here,” Effie said. “Except maybe at