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Of course it was Merrick, but then it wasn't Merrick at all.
With her right hand she put the cigarette to her lips and drew on it, deeply, with the casual air of an accustomed smoker,
and let her breath out with ease.
Her eyebrows were raised as she looked at me, and her lips were drawn back in a beautiful sneer. Indeed, the expression
was so alien to the Merrick I had come to know that it was very simply terrifying all to itself. One couldn't imagine a
skilled actress so successfully altering her features. As for the voice which came out of the body, it was sultry and low.
"Good cigarettes, Mr. Talbot. Rothmans, aren't they?" The right hand toyed with the little box which she had taken from
my room. The woman's voice continued, cold, utterly without feeling, and with a faint tone of mockery. "Matthew used to
smoke Rothmans, Mr. Talbot. He went to the French Quarter to buy them. You don't find them at the comer store.
Smoked them right up until he died."
"Who are you?" I asked.
Aaron said nothing. He relinquished command to me at this moment completely, but he stood his ground.
"Don't be so hasty, Mr. Talbot," came the hard-toned answer. "Ask me a few questions." She gave more of her weight to
the left elbow on the dressing table, and the petticoat gaped to reveal more of her full breasts.
Her eyes positively sparkled in the light of the dressing table lamps. It seemed her lids and eyebrows were governed
exclusively by a new personality. She was not even Merrick's twin.
"Cold Sandra?" I asked.
A burst of laughter came out of her that was ominous and shocking. She tossed her black hair and drew on the cigarette
again.
"She never told you one word about me, did she?" she asked, and once again came that sneer, beautiful yet full of
venom. "She was always jealous. I hated her from the day she was born."
"Honey in the Sunshine," I said calmly.
She nodded, grinning at me, letting go of the smoke.
"That's a name that's always been good enough for me. And there she goes, leaving me out of the story. Well, don't you
think I'll settle for so little, Mr. Talbot. Or should I call you David? I think you look like a David, you know, righteous and
clean living and all of that." She crushed out the cigarette right into the tabletop. And with one hand now, she took
another, and lighted it with the gold lighter which I had also left in my room.
She turned the lighter over now, the cigarette dangling from her lip, and through the little coil of smoke she read the
inscription. "To David, my Savior, from Joshua." Her eyes flashed on my face, and she smiled.
The words she'd read cut deep into me, but I would have none of it. I merely stared at her. This would take a little time.
"You're damned right," she said, "it's going to take time. Don't you think I want some of what she's getting. But let's talk
about this here, Joshua, he was your lover, wasn't he? You were lovers with him and he died."
The pain I felt was exquisite, and for all my claim to enlightenment and self-knowledge, I was mortified that these
words were spoken in Aaron's presence. Joshua had been young, and one of us.
She laughed a low, carnal laugh. "Course you can do women, too, if they're young enough, can't you?" she asked
viciously.
"Where do you come from, Honey in the Sunshine?" I demanded.
"Don't call her by name," Aaron whispered.
"Oh, that's good advice, but it don't matter. I'm staying right where I am. Now let's talk about you and that boy, Joshua.
Seems he was mighty young when you ."
"Stop it," I said sharply.
"Don't talk to it, David," said Aaron under his breath. "Don't address it. Every time you talk to it, you give it strength."
A high pealing laughter erupted from the little woman at the dressing table. She shook her head and turned her body to
face us completely, the hem of the slip riding up on her naked thighs.
"I'd say he was eighteen maybe," she said, looking at me with blazing eyes as she took the cigarette off her lip. "But you
didn't know for sure, did you, David? You just knew you had to have him."
"Get out of Merrick," I said. "You don't belong in Merrick."
"Merrick's my sister!" she flashed. "I'll do what I want with her. She drove me crazy from the cradle, always reading my
mind, telling me what I thought, telling me I made my own trouble, always blaming everything on me!"
She scowled at me and leant forward. I could see her nipples.
"You give yourself away for what you are," I said. "Or is it what you were?"
Suddenly she rose from the dressing table, and the left hand, free of the cigarette, swept all the bottles and the lamp off
the right side of the table, with one fine blow.
There was a roar of shattered glass. The lamp went out with a loud spark. Two or more of the bottles were broken. The
carpet was littered with sharp fragments. The room was filled with a powerful perfume.
She stood before us, her hand on her hip, the cigarette held high. She looked down at the bottles.
"Yeah, she likes those things!" she said.
Her posture became ever more suggestive, mocking. "And you do like what you see, don't you, David? She's just young
enough for you. She's got some of the little boy left in her, don't she? Great Nananne knew you and what you wanted. And
I know you too."
Her face was full of anger and very beautiful.
"You killed Joshua, didn't you?" she said in a low voice, eyes suddenly narrow, as if she was peering into my soul. "You
let him go on that climb in the Himalayas ." She pronounced the word as I would have said it. "And you knew it was
dangerous but you loved him so much, you couldn't say no."
I could say nothing. The pain in me was too intense. I tried to banish all thoughts of Joshua. I tried not to think of the
day when they had brought his body back to London. I tried to focus on the girl before me.
"Merrick," I said with all the strength I could muster, "Merrick, drive her out."
"You want me, and so do you, Aaron," she continued, the grin making her checks supple, her face flushing. "Either one
of you'd tack me to that mattress if you thought you could."
I said nothing.
"Merrick," said Aaron loudly. "Cast her out. She means you no good, darling, cast her out!"
"You know what Joshua was thinking about you when he fell off that cliff?" she said.
"Stop it!" I cried.
"He was hating you for sending him, hating you for saying yes, he could go!"
"Liar!" I said. "Get out of Merrick."
"Don't you shout at me, Mister," she blazed back. She glanced down at the broken glass and tapped her ashes into it. [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]