They Call Me Patrice

The first phone call came the following evening, with remorseless precision.

He’d timed it well. He couldn’t have timed it better if he’d been able to look through the walls of the house and watch their movements on the inside. The two men were out. She’d just finished putting Hugh to sleep. She and Mother Hazzard were both upstairs in their own rooms. Which meant that she was the logical one to go down to answer.

She knew at the first ring who it was, what it was. She knew too, that she’d been expecting this call all day, that she’d known it was coming, it was surely coming.

Chapter Seven

She stood there rooted, unable to move. Maybe the ringing would stop if she didn’t go near the phone, maybe he would tire. But then it would ring again some other time.

Mother Hazzard opened the door of her room and looked out.

Patrice had swiftly opened her own door, was at the head of the stairs, before she’d fully emerged.

“I’ll go, dear, if you’re busy.”

“No, never mind, Mother, I’ll see who it is.”

She knew his voice right away. Fear quickens the senses.

“Is this the younger Mrs. Hazzard? Is this Patrice Hazzard?”

“This is she.”

“I suppose you know this is Steve.” She didn’t answer.

“Are you where you can be heard?”

“I’m not in the habit of answering questions like that. I’ll hang up the receiver.”

“Don’t do that, Patrice,” he said calmly. “I’ll ring back again. That’ll make it worse. They’ll begin wondering who it is keeps on calling so repeatedly. Or, eventually, someone else will answer — you can’t stay there by the phone all evening — and I’ll give my name if I have to and ask for you.” He waited a minute for that to sink in. “Don’t you see that it’s much better for you this way, Patrice?”

She sighed in suppressed fury. “We can’t talk very much over the phone. I think it’s better not to, anyway. I’m talking from McClellan’s Drugstore, a few blocks from you. My car’s just around the corner from there, where it can’t be seen. On the left side of Pomeroy Street, just down from the crossing. Can you walk down that far for five or ten minutes? I won’t keep you long.”

She tried to match the brittle formality of his voice with her own. “I most certainly cannot.”

“Of course you can. You need cod-liver oil capsules for your baby, from McClellan’s. Or you feel like having a soda. I’ve seen you stop in there more than once, in the evening.”

He waited.

“Shall I call back? Would you rather think it over awhile?”

He waited again.

“Don’t do that,” she said reluctantly, at last.

She could tell he understood. She hung up and went upstairs.

Mother Hazzard didn’t ask her who had called. They weren’t inquisitive that way, in this house.

She came out of her room again in about ten minutes. Mother Hazzard’s door was closed. She could have gone on down the stairs unquestioned. She couldn’t do it.

She went over and knocked lightly.

“Mother, I’m going to take a walk down to the drugstore. Hughie’s out of his talc. And I’d like a breath of air. I’ll be back in five minutes.”

“Go ahead, dear. I’ll say good night to you now, in case I’m asleep by the time you get back.”

She rested her outstretched hand helplessly against the door for a minute. She felt like saying. Don’t let me go. Keep me here.

She turned away and went down the stairs. It was her own battle, and no proxies were allowed.

She stopped beside the car, on darkened Pomeroy Street.

“Sit in here, Patrice,” he said amiably. He unlatched the door for her, from where he sat, and even patted the leather cushion.

She settled herself on the far side of the seat. Her eyes snapped refusal of the cigarette he proffered.

“We can be seen.”

“Turn this way, toward me. No one’ll notice you. Keep your back to the street.”

“This can’t go on. Now once and for all, for the first time and the last, what is it you want of me? What?”

“Look, Patrice, there doesn’t have to be anything unpleasant about this. You seem to be building it up to yourself that way, in your own mind. It’s all in the way you look at it. I don’t see that there has to be any change in the way things were going along — before last night. You were the only one who knew before. Now you and I are the only ones who know. It ends there. That is, if you want it to.”

“You didn’t bring me out here to tell me that.”

He went off at a tangent. Or what seemed to be a tangent. “Every once in awhile I find myself in difficulties, every now and then I get into a tight squeeze. Little card games with the boys. This and that. You remember. You know how it is.” He laughed deprecatingly. “It’s been going on for years. It’s nothing new. But I was wondering if you’d care to do me a favor — this time.”

“You’re asking me for money.”

She turned her face away.

“I didn’t think there were people like you outside of — outside of penitentiaries.”

He laughed. “You’re in unusual circumstances. That attracts ‘people like me.’ ”