Nemesis

William P. McGivern Nemesis

Chapter I

The argument was pretty silly. It started over a dinner. Not an ordinary dinner, but a very special one.

Larry Kent was tired when he sat down to eat and he didn’t notice how special it was. He propped his paper against a catsup bottle and ate his shrimp salad without glancing from the story he’d started on the train.

When his wife cleared the salad dish and brought the roast in from the kitchen he didn’t notice the triumphant expression on her face. The triumphant expression of a bride who has worked all day on a dish and is slightly amazed and very proud that it turned out the way the cook-book said it would.

She stood in the arched doorway that led from the kitchen waiting for his admiring approval. And when he didn’t look up she said, “Look, Larry, isn’t it wonderful?”

He had been working hard all day on a tough set of figures for one of the company’s new clients. He was hungry and he felt a little quirk of irritation. There wasn’t any reason for it. It was just the way he felt.

“Well, let’s eat,” he said. “Don’t stand there with it. I’m hungry.”

He didn’t notice that her lips were trembling as she served the rest of the dinner. He ate in silence and finished the paper. Then he felt a little better.

He lit a cigarette and it tasted good. He pushed his chair back a little from the table and smiled at his wife.

“That hit the spot, hon,” he said. “Funny, how a little thing like a meal picks a guy up.”

She was very young and very lovely and her feelings were hurt.

“I’m glad you liked it,” she said. Her voice was stiff with the effort she made to keep it steady. “I worked all day in the kitchen getting it ready.”

“Well, I said it was good, didn’t I?” he said.

“You didn’t even know what you were eating,” she said. “You read the paper all through the meal.”

He felt a quirk of irritation again. “Of course I read the paper,” he said. “It’s the only chance I get to read it in peace. Let’s don’t argue about it. The meal was fine. Is that what you want me to say?”

She stood up then, and her voice shook a little.

“I don’t want you to say anything. I’d just like a little appreciation when I work all day trying to fix something you’ll like. I don’t want to be treated like a piece of furniture.”

He stood up then, and he felt a pang of guilt, for he realized how badly this little thing had hurt her. But a stubborn streak in him wouldn’t let him say the things that would have made it all right. If he had taken her in his arms then and told her how pretty she was and how well she ran the house and what a louse he was everything would have been smoothed over. But he didn’t.

He said, “Stop making a mountain of it. I’m tired as hell and I don’t feel like arguing. I feel like a quiet drink and a little peace.”

She started to cry then. She looked so helpless and vulnerable that his stubbornness melted. He started for her with the right words ready on his lips, but she ran past him into the bedroom. He heard the door slam behind her and then the house was quiet except for the sound of her muffled crying.

She was lying on the bed, he knew, face buried in the pillow, waiting for him to come in and apologize.

This had never happened before and it made him feel nervous and irritable. What the hell was she crying about?

He loved her. She must know that. They had been married only two months and it had been perfect. And now this damn thing.

He lit another cigarette and walked into the living room. He stopped mid-way between the closed door of the bedroom and the front door of the apartment and tried to decide what to do.

The idea of a drink came back to him and it was just what he wanted. He went to the kitchen cabinet where he kept the whisky, but the bourbon bottle had only about a quarter of an inch left.

That was a big thing in his life but he didn’t realize it. If there’d been a drink in the bottle a number of things might never have happened. But he had no way of knowing that.

He went back to the front room and the two doors were like magnets trying to pull him in opposite directions. From behind the bedroom door the crying had stopped. That made him feel a little better.

He decided then that she was just acting silly and that she needed a good lesson. If he didn’t take a firm hand right now she might make a habit of this sort of foolishness.

He put on his hat and coat, put his cigarettes in his outside pocket and walked to the door. There, he almost weakened. He didn’t want to go out for a drink. He wasn’t that kind of a guy. He loved his wife, but he thought she needed a lesson.

So he opened the door and was very careful to close it with a loud, defiant bang! He wanted her to know he was going.

He went down the two flights of stairs quickly, because he knew if he paused once, he’d go back. Outside the cool autumn air was bracing.