The deepening gloom of his unlit office matched his mood as he sat watching the sun’s reluctant descent down the glazed western façade of the high-rise apartments across the park. The shadows stretching upward from the obscured base of the building looked like dark, eager fingers straining to catch the slowly falling red ball.
A blinding glare; like a baleful glance from God; flared from one of the windows, forcing him to look away. He turned back to his desk and switched on the lamp, illuminating the claims he had been reviewing when Marie called to remind him that her sister and family were coming to dinner tonight. He had not needed to be reminded. The thought had haunted his day.
Putting the top claim aside he picked up the next one forcing himself to concentrate on the neatly typed information it conveyed. The name of the claimant came into focus. Good Lord! Another of old Mrs. Mc Andrew’s fender benders. How many did that make this year? Two-no, three. The company will probably want to cancel her coverage. At the least, it will mean another increase in her premium. It was already astronomical, but she could easily afford it. She has to, if she is going to keep asserting her right to life, liberty, and the hot pursuit of every other motorist who happens to cross her path. It was a wonder they had not taken her license away from her before now. Having a brother who is a police captain undoubtedly helped, but she-and her potential victims-would be a lot safer if they grounded her. She was fortunate not to have seriously injured anyone-or herself-before now. But what in God’s name was it that turned an otherwise sweet-tempered woman of sixty into a fuming, vengeful old harridan as soon as she got behind the wheel of a car? For that matter, what had changed Marie from a seemingly shy, quiet, docile girl to the surly, defiant, churlish woman he was married to. Imponderables, both of them.
With a muttered sigh of “Oh hell,” he began gathering up the papers scattered across the top of the desk. Tapping their edges to align them, he opened the top right-hand drawer and dropped them in, slamming it shut again.
He switched off the lamp, stood up and started towards the door leading to the outer office, long since deserted by Gladys and Dolores, his two employees. The sudden jangling of the phone startled and annoyed him. He hesitated in the doorway, tempted to ignore it. Probably just Marie calling to see if he was on his way home. But, it could be a client too, even though it was almost an hour later than his usual closing time. He retraced his steps and picked up the receiver on the third ring.
“Mark Tuesday speaking,” he informed the caller.
The voice of Ben Wozniak boomed in his ear. “Mark! I’m glad I caught you before you left! I was afraid you might be on your way home by now.” He did not bother to identify himself. With his voice he knew it was not necessary.
“Hello, Ben. I was just catching up on some paperwork. What’s the trouble?” Ben’s agitated tone clearly presaged trouble. He held the phone six inches from his head to lessen the assault on his eardrum.
“One of my goddam rigs is piled up out on Highway 32. The sheriff’s office just called me.”
He switched on the desk lamp again and reached for a pad with the legend, ‘The Tuesday Agency-Insurance for your everyday needs.’ printed at the top. He made a note of the date and time, ‘10/16/72, 5:35 p.m.’ as he asked, “How long ago did it happen?”
“Only about fifteen or twenty minutes ago, according to the sheriff’s office.”
“Anyone injured?”
“Yeah.” Ben lowered his voice a few decibels, “The driver. He’s dead.”
“Too bad. Anyone else injured?”
“They didn’t say anything about anybody else being hurt.”
“Any other vehicles involved?”
“A coupla’ near misses but no damage, from what they told me.”
“Did the sheriff’s office give you the names of the occupants of the other vehicles?”
“No, but they said they were still at the scene of the wreck. Maybe you could get out there before they leave.”
Ben was the owner of Central States Motor Freight, one of the larger trucking companies operating in that part of the country, and one of his newer and more lucrative clients. Even though the accident seemed to be capable of being handled routinely, by an adjuster, he knew that a primary reason for Ben’s having been persuaded to switch his insurance coverage to The Tuesday Agency, was his reputation for providing personal service. Obviously a sample of that service was now being expected of him and; since it also gave him the hoped-for excuse not to go home; he welcomed the opportunity.
“Where exactly did it happen, Ben?” he asked.
“A coupla’ miles east of Plainville. Suicide Hill. You know where it is.”
He did. Plainville was less than ten miles west of where he lived in Glen Park. He had frequently traveled back and forth over the main road linking the two towns. “Suicide Hill” was a long, straight downgrade on the westbound lanes of the divided highway, culminating in a sharp S-curve under a railway overpass. It was an engineering fiasco and a dangerous stretch of road, aptly named. It would take him about thirty minutes to drive there from where his office was located on the western edge of the city.
“All right, Ben. I’ll leave right away. Do you want me to call you later?”
“Yeah. Do that. I’ll probably be here most of the night anyhow. I’ll have to wait until they bring the freight back in and reload it.”
After Ben had severed the connection with his usual abruptness, he quickly tapped out the combination for his home phone. His daughter’s voice was a sweetly, melodious contrast to the stentorian tones of the trucking company owner still lingering in his ear.
“Hello. This is the Tuesday res’dence. This is Cassandra Tuesday speaking.” Just as he had taught her.
“Hello, sweetheart. It’s Daddy. Let me speak to your mother.”
“Oh Daddy! Are you coming home now?” Her hopeful eagerness stabbed at his conscience. He really should be going home instead of jumping at the chance not to. She was growing more precocious and susceptible every day. Her less-than-six year old childish innocence and sweet nature could not be expected to remain impervious much longer to the blatant vulgarity and maliciousness that characterized the conduct and conversation of her aunt and uncle-and, to a still immature degree, her two cousins. Marie, long since contaminated by her own growing dependency on Julie Fay as a receptacle for her bitterness and frustration, seemed unaware or uncaring of the effect that the increasing frequency of their visits might have on her daughter. And he was becoming fearful that his own efforts to shield her and counteract their influence would be less effective as time passed and she was more exposed to them, But, now he had made a commitment to Ben, and felt an obligation to keep it.
“In a little while, honey,” he told her. “I have some business to take care of first.”
He heard Marie’s voice in the background, “Give me that,” and then in his ear, “Where are you?”
“I’m still at the office. I just had a call from Ben Wozniak. One of his trucks has been involved in a bad accident. The driver was killed. I’m going out there now. I just wanted to let you know I won’t be home for dinner.”
She made a small sound of scepticism. “So you managed to find an excuse after all.”
“Whether I found it, or it found me, is irrelevant. The fact is, Ben’s an important client and he wants me to handle it myself.”
“I s’pose my sister n’ her family aren’t important?”
Her words were slightly slurred, two martinis slurred, he estimated. “I haven’t got time to debate the point, Marie. I want to get out there as soon as I can, before the witnesses leave.”
“What time will you be home?”
“I don’t know. It shouldn’t be too late. The accident happened near Plainville.”
She snickered. “I’ll tell Julie Fay ‘n Floyd that you’re real sorry you missed ‘em.”
“Tell them anything you please. I’ll see you later, Marie. Goodbye.”
He hung up, switched off the desk lamp and left the office. He set the night lock on the glass-partitioned outer door, trying the knob from the outside, and walked down the long dimly lit hall toward the rear of the building. Descending the single flight of worn, wooden stairs to the street level, he pushed open the heavy, metal-clad door of the back entrance leading to the parking lot. A mingled odor of cheap wine and urine permeated the air and, looking behind the door to the right, he saw the filthy, bedraggled hulk of what was once a man sprawled face-up along the wall. He had evidently passed out in the act of relieving himself and his flaccid penis lay exposed in limp obscenity through his gaping fly. He glanced up at the rear of the tenement that looked out on the alley. A toothless, wrinkled face of indeterminate gender grinned back at him lasciviously from a third floor window. Whether male or female, it was obviously enjoying the spectacle. Walking to the feet of the comatose form, he bent down, grasped the ankles and rolled him over on his stomach. The drunk grunted softly-perhaps gratefully-and slumbered on.
Straightening up again, he looked back at the window. The unisex face stuck its tongueout at him and disappeared.
He could not postpone it any longer. He was going to have to do something about finding new quarters for the agency. The neighborhood was deteriorating rapidly. Signs of it had been appearing for better than a year now. Lately, the process had seemed to be accelerating. The small, sedate shops that had formerly lined both sides of the street on which his office faced, had gradually given way to garishly cluttered windows, half covered with anguished, silently screaming posters proclaiming the owner’s imminent bankruptcy. A miasma of grease-saturated, refried food, stale beer, and cheap cosmetics emanated from the doorways of neon-emblazoned restaurants, bars, and drugstores. Obviously, and outlandishly, costumed hookers openly patrolled the sidewalks. Gladys and Dolores; apparently apprehensive of the changing scenery and citizenry; were now bringing their lunches with them to the office, and had taken to arriving and leaving together every day. Even the halls of the building housing the agency had grown dingy with neglect. There was no point in any further delay. It was only some unaccountable quirk of sentimentality that had kept him from making the move before now. The office was the original home of Spencer and Tuesday, the partnership formed by his father and Joe Spencer. But they were both dead, and now the acrid smell rising from the wine-besotted, urine-soaked figure huddled against the wall seemed like the stench of putrefaction in the warm, humid air of the decaying neighbourhood.
He walked to his car and unlocked it. The interior was still hot from the sun of the Indian Summer day, although the car was now completely covered by the building’s shadow. He checked his watch as he started the engine and saw that it was almost five forty-five. Backing away from the sign attached to the wall of the building lettered ‘Reserved for Mr. Tuesday,’ he straightened the car and drove through the alley to the street. He waited for an opening in the traffic, and turned right, heading west. At the corner, he made another right turn and drove north for three blocks before turning west again to join the last of the rush hour traffic on the freeway. As he drove down the ramp he had the feeling of being swept along by the headlong rush of some maddened, intricately-articulated, steel-clad serpent, slithering its way back into hell after another day of fruitless searching for a lost Eden.
At least, he had gained a temporary reprieve from his own private hell-even if it was at the regrettable cost of the life of the truck driver. Another evening of fun and games with Julie Fay, Floyd, and their two snivelling, unruly brats, Teddy and Alice, had seemed unavoidable. He had not told Ben the truth. He had simply delayed leaving for home as long as possible, anticipating the smirking effusiveness of the welcome he could expect when he got there. Julie Fay; with her brazenly thrusting breasts and provocatively ungirdled pelvis; undulating toward him, the sneer of her heavy sensuous mouth reflected in her over-mascared half-closed eyes, as she greeted him with alcohol-husky sarcasm, “Hello, lovuh boy.” And shambling, unkempt Floyd; a parody of affability, whose sagging belt-line and dragging cuffs seemed to epitomize the fate of his youthful hopes and ambitions; exposing his large, yellow teeth in a lopsided, fatuous grin as he hailed him, “Hi ya, Mark, old boy! Ya’ catch any ambulances today?”, undismayed, as always, by his failure to achieve the result he had hoped for.
After such a beginning, the rest of the evening was usually anti-climatic, if stultifying.
TOO many drinks; which, at least, made it all seem bearable and mercifully briefer; interspersed with meaningless, acrimonious conversation; interrupted by the screams and tantrums of their two undisciplined offspring; and intermingled with gratuitously malicious insults, accusations and recriminations. Only Cassandra; miraculously sweet-natured and seemingly undisturbed by the malevolent conduct of those around her; remained outside the scope of their vicious attacks on one another. They all knew-even Teddy and Alice-that he would not tolerate any form, or manner of abuse to be directed at her. But, a deepening awareness of her increasing vulnerability had compelled him to be present more often during their visits, to provide her with an island of sanity and safety that she could cling to in the rising tide of hate and despair that threatened to engulf them all.
But, good God! Now Marie was beginning to invite them over almost every week. It had been bad enough when she had invited them only once a month-and it had been a damn sight better when she had not invited them at all. After the spectacle they had made of themselves at the wedding reception she knew he had formed an instant, and permanent, aversion toward both of them. For the first couple of years after their marriage, she had been careful to invite them to the house only when she was sure he would not be home. Then, as the chasm between them gradually began to widen and deepen; and her premarital tractability slowly turned to defiance; it had become increasingly obvious that she did not care what he thought any more, and this was just another way of showing it.
The change in her in the six and a half years of their marriage had been profound. Not physically-even though she had passed her thirty-first birthday in July she still had the long, butter-yellow hair; pale, high-cheekboned, wedge-shaped face; large, pixyish gray eyes and primly puckered mouth that, at first, had seemed too girlishly cute for his taste. It had taken almost three years-mainly because his standing with the insurance company for whom she had been employed as receptionist, usually gained him ready access to the inner sanctums which she guarded-before the gradual metamorphosis wrought by the maturing lines of her face and figure, finally awakened his interest.
He had had to wait longer than usual that day and; as the reception room gradually emptied; had become more aware of the supple movements of her slender, high-breasted body, and the pleasant competent manner he had come to take for granted. For a moment, he had not even been sure she was the same young woman he had so long ignored, but then had recognized and admired the transformation that had taken place, The brief, trite conversation that followed-the words now interred in his memory along with the desire that had prompted them-had been sufficient to change “Mr. Tuesday,” “Miss Gillian,” to “Mark” and “Marie,” and had ended with his inviting her to dinner. She had been hesitant, but had accepted when he renewed the invitation on the way out.
She had told him later that his was the first invitation she had accepted in the time she had worked there. Her tone had implied that the invitations had been both numerous and varied, and extended without regard to position or marital status. Flattered, but curious, he had asked why she had made an exception in his case, With disarming, if illogical, frankness she had replied that he had been the only one she had hoped would ask her, because he had been the only one who had not shown any interest in her. There had seemed no reason to doubther, and it had been easier to believe her, then.
They had been married six months later after an uneventful and remarkably platonic courtship. She had astonished him with a strict code of morality which-once he had overcome his initial frustration and disbelief-had won his grudging, then growing admiration. It had been a new experience; one that the unresisting promiscuity of previous affairs had left him totally unprepared for. There had been no coyness in her adamant rejection of his advances, and no anger either, at his persistence. Finally, persuaded that her determination; while still mystifying; was apparently unshakeable, he had accepted her decision and had begun to see in it-and her-an admirable, even desirable, moral standard that any man would be-must be-proud of in the woman he would have as his wife, and the potential mother of his children. It had been easy after that, to recognize other qualities that-on the rare occasions he had given the matter any consideration at all-had seemed preferable in a marriage partner. An absence of pretense; a gentle, unassuming nature; an honest enjoyment of simple pleasures (a walk in the park, a ride in the country, a visit to the zoo-things which he found only tolerably pleasant, but which she seemed to find inordinately exciting); and an artless-ness that bordered on childish naivité; all only further enhanced the image inspired by her unremitting virtue.
In the end, it had been her lack of sophistication, and erudition, and intellectualism-qualities that had initially stimulated, and ultimately stifled his interest in her predecessors-that finally had convinced him that she would make an agreeable, pliant and faithful wife. Feeling it was expected; although not believing it was entirely necessary; he had told her he loved her, and proposed. She had told him she loved him; although he had not been sure, and had not cared, that she knew what the word meant any more than he did; and accepted. Now; when even the searing flame of a self-incriminating ‘why?’ had died, leaving only an ashy residue of ‘if,’ he still was not sure what it meant. But, he was now certain that no marriage; least of all, his own; could survive without some insight-however, personal and unique-into its meaning by both partners.
Not even his mother’s evident, but unspoken, reservations about their suitability for each other had deterred him. He had persisted in his decision to marry her even when he realized; through the medium of Grace’s adroit questioning; how little he actually knew about Marie’s family and background. She had not volunteered-and he had not been sufficiently concerned to elicit-much more than the essential facts that she had been born and christened, Marie Louise Gillian, in Wentworth, Oklahoma, in July 1940, six months before her father was killed in the Phillipines. He had been one of the first to be sent overseas, leaving his seventeen year old, pregnant, bride-of-a-week behind. Her mother had subsequently been remarried twice-a year later to Julie Fay’s father; another young soldier who also had died without ever seeing his daughter; and two years later, to her present husband; a man named Mayfield; who, fortunately, had been 4F, and now operated the largest grocery market in Wentworth, and was the father of her six other half-brothers and sisters.
Marie had also admitted that she had left home six years earlier, shortly after her eighteenth birthday, under circumstances which she apparently regretted and preferred to forget. It was the only subject on which she had seemed less than forthright but, recognizing her reluctance, he had not pressed her for the details. It had not seemed relevant, He had been more interested in the wife he expected her to be, than the girl she might have been.
And who could have anticipated the likes of Julie Fay and Floyd? Floyd was Julie’s third husband, her first two marriages having ended in divorce even though she was still only twenty-two. But, not having met them-or any other member of Marie’s family-prior to the wedding, the shock and revulsion caused by Julie Fay’s increasing drunkenness at the reception; capped by her blatant willingness to make herself available to every man present, including himself (incredibly, she had been two months pregnant with Teddy at the time); and accompanied by an equally drunk Floyd’s raucously repeated pronouncement that she was “the fuckines’ woman he ever seed”; had opened a suppurating wound on their marriage that neither of them had been capable of healing in the intervening years. By now, he had lost interest in trying, as the magnitude of his mistake had soon become inescapable.
He had not entertained any puerile anticipation of being the first to penetrate her hymen and, besides, the virgin bride had become a virtual anachronism. Still, there had been a vague and inevitable disenchantment in discovering-when, finally, on the third night of their honeymoon, Marie had made the ultimate surrender-that there was nothing to impede his entry to her. She had never actually claimed to be a virgin but; seemingly aware of his disillusionment, and contrite that she had, perhaps, misled him; she then had told him a long, sordid, tearful tale of rape at the hands of the football hero son of the Wentworth high school principal; and of a subsequent abortion arranged by the prospective, but unwilling, grandfather; and performed by the town’s leading pharmacist on a table in the back room of his establishment. He had believed her, and he had believed her excuse of being too afraid and ashamed to tell him before they were married. He had had to believe her. The alternative had been unthinkable.
But, in the days, and particularly, the nights of their honeymoon that followed, his disappointment had vanished with her prudishness-a prudishness which, initially, had seemed a proof of her virtue as she had refused to undress in front of him, or look at him in his nakedness, and had wanted the room in complete darkness before she would come to him. Gradually, he had been able to overcome these phobias until; by the time they returned home; their love-making had begun to reach a high level of mutual enjoyment and satisfaction. And, as the weeks passed, and their sexual appetites intensified, he had grown more confident that he had made the right choice after all-even though it soon became apparent that some of the other attributes that had seemed so appealing, now left something to be desired. What had seemed a natural reticence turned out to be nothing more-or less-than a basic inarticulateness; and what he had thought a quiet reserve, was only an almost complete lack of interest in everything beyond the immediate range of her five senses. Still, it had been possible to believe that their marriage had a reasonable chance for survival, until she became pregnant.
He never had been fond of children since ceasing to consider himself as one of them, and had not harbored any desire to want to father any of his own. He had felt only a mild chagrin when she told him that, as a possible consequence of her earlier abortion, she might not be able to have children. Her subsequent reaction to the discovery that she could, indicated she had been convinced of it. Still, he had been almost as disappointed as Marie to find that she was pregnant so soon after their marriage. But, her suggestion of another abortion had been immediately, and permanently abhorrent. Although born and still nominally, at least, a Catholic-despite an only intermittent attendance at any of the services, and the fact of their civil marriage-his unyielding refusal was not inspired by religious scruples, but by the realization that he wanted to see and to know the being he had helped conceive.
When she saw that she would be unable to persuade him to change his mind, she had begun her retreat into an ever-thickening and toughening shell of surly, ill-tempered churlishness from which she had never fully emerged again, even after Cassandra was born. He had tried; his success diminishing concomitantly with the distension of her abdomen; to placate her anger and assuage her fears throughout her pregnancy. But; even after a relatively brief and easy labor, and with her figure restored to its prenatal, unwrinkled firmness and slenderness; she had still persisted in her bitterness and had refused to resume intercouse unless he used a contraceptive. He had then-and still retained-an innate antipathy for such devices and had consistently preferred to abstain from sex rather than submit to the indignity of using one. Since the problem arose before the proliferation of the pill; and she distrusted other female devices, and the rhythm system (Cassandra was a constant reminder to her of the failure of the latter); their sex life had become, for her, unwilling and fraught with anxiety; and for him, unsatisfactory and demeaning. Inevitably, for both of them; and particularly after she moved her things into a separate bedroom (a move which initially had angered him, but which he no longer had any desire to reverse); their sexual encounters had become less frequent until, in the last year, they had finally ceased altogether. Even the growing availability and proven effectiveness of the new methods of birth control had been too little and too late.
As the estrangement between them had grown deeper and more irreversible, she had begun to turn to Julie Fay for aid and comfort with increasing regularity. He did not blame or try to prevent her, though he made no secret of his own dislike for his oversexed sister-in-law and her hapless husband. But then, as if to punish him for his betrayal (which was how she had come to interpret his refusal to allow her to have an abortion) she had started inflicting their company on him with an almost sadistic delight. It only seemed to heighten the perversity of her pleasure whenever he was unable to find some excuse to avoid them-as had seemed likely tonight.
But, recalling the eagerness in Cassandra’s voice, and the tragedy that had provided the excuse this time, there was no satisfaction in having successfully thwarted Marie’s plans for the evening. It had only brought them one step closer to the inevitable dissolution of their marriage. It was as impossible to continue living in the debilitating atmosphere of their relationship, as it was impractical to continue to work in the decaying environs of his office. Both situations needed changing, and soon. The only trouble was, that ending a marriage was not as simple, or as painless, as breaking a lease. Or, was it?