Ask for Me Tomorrow

She often asked his opinion to make him feel he had a hand in running the house. She even waited a few seconds after each question as though giving him a chance to consider and to answer. He had no answer. If he had, he couldn’t have spoken it, and if he could have spoken, he wouldn’t. Answers were useless when there were no issues left to be resolved, only time to be put in.

“She and Reed are beginning to feud over everything. Someday when you’re better I’ll fire both of them, and you and I will take a long trip together. Maybe I’ll buy another home on wheels like Dreamboat... Just think, if B. J. and I had gone away together in Dreamboat the way I’d planned, none of these terrible things would have happened. He wouldn’t have deserted me for Tula and wouldn’t have gotten involved with Harry Jenkins and been sent to jail. Tula wouldn’t be walking the streets in Rio Seco, and Jenkins himself would be alive. You’ve often heard me talk about Jenkins, B. J.’s old partner in crime.”

She watched the fingers of his right hand to see if he raised them to indicate interest. They didn’t move. Perhaps the sleeping hypo had already taken effect; perhaps he couldn’t remember Jenkins and didn’t want to. She went on talking anyway. Nothing could have stopped her now.

“Jenkins died last night and was buried late this afternoon. They bury people as soon as possible in Mexico, I’m not sure why. The funeral only cost fifty dollars, imagine that. In this town they don’t even allow you to look at a coffin for fifty dollars. Since he’s already buried, there won’t be an autopsy and probably nobody will ever know for sure what killed him. Aragon thinks some kind of drug was slipped into his drink. He didn’t say so directly but he gave the impression that he suspects B. J. did it. That’s rather funny, isn’t it?”

He didn’t think it was funny. Laughter had been lost longer and farther back in his brain than speech.

“Naturally, I told Aragon the idea was ridiculous. I’m not so sure it was, though. Oh, I know B. J. could never have done anything violent. But merely putting something in a drink, that’s such a quiet little crime, hardly more than running off with one of the servants.”

He willed her to stop talking and go away. It was useless. His will had no more power than the rest of him. He could only listen and wish he was deaf and hope for an earthquake, a thunderstorm, the ringing of a phone, a dog barking, the sound of a car in the driveway, a low-flying plane. Shut up and leave me alone, leave me be.

“And Tula,” she said. “Poor little Tula. I drove down to Rio Seco years ago before B. J. and I were married. It was an evil place. You could smell it rotting, the garbage, the sewage in the streets, the decadence and decay. What a strange fate for such a pretty young girl. A ‘nymphet’ I believe they’d call her nowadays. You know what a nymphet is? I looked it up in the encyclopedia. It’s a young nymph. And a nymph is like a larva and a larva is sort of a worm. Wormlet — that doesn’t sound quite so flattering or mysterious, does it? Wormlet. It describes her perfectly.” Her brief laugh was more like a cough. “If the worm turns, I wonder if the wormlet makes a turnlet. B. J. would have thought that was funny. He had a nice sense of humor.”

I don’t. Go away.

She pulled the woolen blanket up around his shoulders. “B. J.’s women, Ethel, me, Tula — they’re the only ones I know of for sure — none of us have had happy lives. I’m not claiming it was his fault, it’s just a fact. Maybe he wrecked things for people, maybe he chose people who were bound to wreck things for themselves. Anyway, Tula’s life is finished and Ethel has lost herself in some weird religious group. That leaves me. I might still have a chance... Yes, the more I think about it, the more the idea appeals to me of buying another motor home like Dreamboat. I won’t be able to get one exactly like it because that was eight years ago, they’ve probably changed quite a few things about it. But basically it will be Dreamboat, and I’ll have the name painted on it just the same way. Then when you’re better, you and I will go on a vacation together.”

She smiled down at him. It was a stage smile that, seen at a distance, might have projected warmth and good cheer. Close up, it chilled him. Her mouth was cold red wax, her teeth were dwarf tombstones, the dimple in her cheek was a hole made by an icepick.

“You and I, dearest,” she said, “you and I will go on a long vacation.”

It was the night Ethel Lockwood was scheduled to address her fellow Sabbathians. The group leader for the occasion had been a poor choice, a nervous young man who stammered and was attempting to overcome his affliction by making protracted speeches in public.

“And so in c-c-conclusion, let me w-w-welcome our f-f-f-friend in need and our f-f-f-friend in deed, Ethel.”