The Merry Spinster: Tales of Everyday Horror(32)
“Darling,” he said.
“Darling,” she said, bowing her head.
“What I can’t understand is why you put up with it.”
“I don’t need her to approve of you,” she said. “I approve of you.”
“I don’t mean what she thinks of me, or doesn’t. I mean all of it.”
“Tess has always been singular. She has what she calls her insistments. She drew a single room every year at school but ended up making sure I bunked with her anyhow. It’s better to let her get her own way. She doesn’t require anyone else to do anything about it, so it’s no trouble. I don’t mind it.”
The front door opened halfway, and a man looked in, scanning the room, then just as suddenly withdrew his head and shoulders back into the street.
“That’s another thing,” David said, striking his leg. “These demands, these whims she’s got. You come home from those sudden trips of hers looking half-starved and half-mad, without a word about where you’ve been or how you got there. They’re absurd. I can’t imagine how you’ve put up with it so long, or why.”
“Well, Tess is absurd. Lots of people are absurd. I don’t see why it should bother you. We don’t have to see her often after we’re married, if that’s what worries you.”
“But that you should have to put up with it,” he said. “When I think of all you’ve— Why hasn’t she offered to help, even once?”
“David.” She smiled, but there was a grimace behind it.
“She’s simply rolling in it, and here you’ve been, living in what’s more or less a garret because she thinks it’s funny—”
“—sewing artificial flowers by candlelight, thumbs bleeding, throwing the family Bible and the last of my stockings into the fire to keep from freezing to death—”
“Laugh if you like, but for all that she’s your oldest and dearest friend, she was certainly unconcerned enough about your going to work when she could have easily covered your share of the rent with what she spends on lunch.”
“Oh, lots of girls work in shops. And I don’t live with Tess because she has money. I live with Tess because we both particularly like it—and it hasn’t stopped me from sleeping in your bed when I feel like it. Soon I’ll be living with you, because you and I would both particularly like it, and you can pay as much of the rent as you want. Something in the neighborhood of all of it would satisfy me, I think.” She put her arms around him and tugged him to her, and he let his head drop against her shoulder. “Don’t let’s quarrel over it, darling.”
“Darling,” he said, only a little muffled from speaking directly into her lapel.
“I’ve never wanted money from Tess,” she said, “and I wouldn’t have liked it if she had tried to give me any.” The door opened again, and she braced David back up in his own chair and smoothed her skirt. “That’s her now, and here you are with the guiltiest look on your face; try to be civil and not rummage through Tess’s bank account, and in return I promise not to notice when your father gets drunk tonight and tries to ask me where I was stationed during the war.”
But it was not Tess.
“The kitchen is closed until five,” Alison said merrily to the young man who stood in the doorway with a puzzled expression, “but you’re welcome to sit and have a cocktail with us in the meantime. You’re about three hours too early for the rehearsal dinner, and I’ve already got a bridegroom, and our waitress has gotten herself lost and bitten by a snake somewhere in the woods between here and the kitchen, and spilled all the champagne, but don’t let that spoil any of your fun. Are you free tomorrow morning? We could use an usher, or at least someone to sit on the groom’s side.” She turned to David. “Does the clerk’s office have a groom’s side? Never mind, you can have the whole city as the groom’s side. If I’m going to have all the people, the least I can do is let you have a nice big side to be a groom in. I don’t count his parents as people, you see”—that last line was directed to the man at the door, whom David couldn’t fault for falling behind.
The man’s expression grew even more puzzled (which David would not have thought possible only a minute ago), and he stammered out an apology. He had been looking for someone, and must have gotten the address wrong.
“Oh, don’t mind that, I expect you were meant to get lost today. This here is the bridegroom,” she said, gesturing at David. “This morning I frightened him. Tomorrow morning I’m going to marry him. Won’t you have some champagne? Our waitress will be back any minute with three or four bottles of it. She’s a very doughty waitress, and it would take more than a snakebite to delay her.” But the man had been slowly edging out of the doorway during her speech, and by the time she got to the snakebite, he was gone, and they were alone again.
Alison gave a little laugh and pressed a kiss against David’s hairline. He had the curious feeling that if he did not say something soon, he would lose the power of speech entirely.
“She’s watched you,” he said, “struggle like a specimen pinned and mounted to a card, when at any time she could have shaken out her handkerchief and let you have at least the stray coins that tumbled out.” If he could not remove the whine entirely from his tone, he had at least managed to keep his voice steady, for the most part, and considered it a qualified hit.