I ignored her. This wasn’t the first time that I’d put a partially dressed woman into a cold shower, and some things are like riding a bike. I lifted her over the rim of the tub in a quick clean-and-jerk I’d feel in the small of my back the next day, then held on tight as the cold water smacked her and she began to flail. She reached out to grab the towel bar, yelling. Her eyes were open now. Beads of water stood in her hair. The slip turned transparent, and even under such circumstances it was impossible not to feel a moment of lust as those curves came into full view.
She tried to get out. I pushed her back.
“Stand there, Sadie. Stand there and take it.”
“H-How long? It’s
“Until I see some color come back into your cheeks.”
“W-Why are you d-d-doing this?” Her teeth were chattering.
“Because you almost killed yourself!” I shouted.
She flinched. Her feet slipped, but she grabbed the towel bar and stayed upright. Reflexes returning. Good.
“The p-p-pills weren’t working, so I had a d-drink, that’s all. Let me get out, I’m so cold. Please G-George,
I turned off the shower, got my arms around her in a hug, and held her as she tottered over the lip of the tub. Water from her soaked slip pattered onto the pink bathmat. I whispered into her ear: “I thought you were dead. When I came in and saw you lying there, I thought you were fucking dead. You’ll never know how that felt.”
I let her go. She stared at me with wide, wondering eyes. Then she said: “John was right. R-Roger, too. He called me tonight before Kennedy’s speech. From Washington. So what does it matter? By this time next week, we’ll
At first I had no idea what she was talking about. I saw Christy standing there, dripping and bedraggled and full of bullshit, and I was utterly furious.
That cleared my head. Could I call her cowardly just because I happened to know what the landscape looked like over the horizon?
I took a bath towel from the rack over the toilet and handed it to her. “Strip off, then dry off,” I said.
“Go out, then. Give me some privacy.”
“I will if you tell me you’re awake.”
“I’m awake.” She looked at me with churlish resentment and — maybe — the tiniest glint of humor. “You certainly know how to make an entrance, George.”
I turned to the medicine cabinet.
“There aren’t any more,” she said. “What isn’t in me is in the commode.”
Having been married to Christy for four years, I looked anyway. Then I flushed the toilet. With that business taken care of, I slipped past her to the bathroom door. “I’ll give you three minutes,” I said.
The return address on the manila envelope was John Clayton, 79 East Oglethorpe Avenue, Savannah, Georgia. You certainly couldn’t accuse the bastard of flying under false colors, or going the anonymous route. The postmark was August twenty-eighth, so it had probably been waiting here for her when she got back from Reno. She’d had nearly two months to brood over the contents. Had she sounded sad and depressed when I’d talked to her on the night of September sixth? Well, no wonder, given the photographs her ex had so thoughtfully sent her.
The pictures were of Japanese men, women, and children. Victims of the atomic bomb-blasts at Hiroshima, Nagasaki, or both. Some were blind. Many were bald. Most were suffering from radiation burns. A few, like the faceless woman, had been charbroiled. One picture showed a quartet of black statues in cringing postures. Four people had been standing in front of a wall when the bomb went off. The people had been vaporized, and most of the wall had been vaporized, too. The only parts that remained were the parts that had been shielded by those standing in front of it. The shapes were black because they were coated in charred flesh.
On the back of each picture, he had written the same message in his clear, neat hand:
“Nice, aren’t they?”
Her voice was flat and lifeless. She was standing in the doorway, bundled into the towel. Her hair fell to her bare shoulders in damp ringlets.
“How much did you have to drink, Sadie?”
“Only a couple of shots when the pills wouldn’t work. I think I tried to tell you that when you were shaking and slapping me.”
“If you expect me to apologize, you’ll wait a long time. Barbiturates and booze are a bad combination.”
“It doesn’t matter,” she said. “I’ve been slapped before.”
