College-Cut Kill

“And a bright moon and a warm breeze. It just so happens that I picked up a suit the other day that ought to fit you.”

She stared hard at me. “No nonsense, Joe?”

“Promise.”

I waited for her in the living room. She went out first. I turned off the lights. There was a trace of phosphorescence in the waves as they broke against the shore.

We went out too far. The fear came without warning. She was surging along, ten feet ahead of me. All knowledge of the shore line was gone. We were in the middle of an ocean.

“Tilly!” I called. “Till!” She didn’t stop. I put on a burst of speed that I knew would wind me completely if I had to continue it for long. As I made a long stroke, my fingertips brushed her foot. I reached and caught her by the ankle.

“No, Joe,” she gasped. “Let me go! Oh, please let me go! Don’t stop me!”

She fought to get free but I wouldn’t let her go. “What good would it do? You’re trying to run away from something.”

Suddenly she was passive. “All right, Joe. I’m all right now.”

“Come on, we’ll get you in.” That was easy to say. In the struggle we had become turned around. I could get no clue as to the direction of the swells. I could see no lights on shore. I knew then that we were out so far that the lights were too close to the horizon for us to see them from our angle of vision.

“Which way, Joe?” she asked, her voice tautening with panic.

Oh, fine, I thought. This was your idea and now you don’t care for it much.

Then, like a letter from home, I saw the pink on the sky, the reflected city lights of Sandson.

“That way,” I said. “Come on. Take it easy.”

After a long time I was able to correct our course by the lights of a familiar hotel. It seemed that we would never, never make it — and then my knee thumped sand. She stood up, swayed and fell forward. I tried to get her up. She was out cold. I got her over my shoulder and weaved up to the house. I dumped her, dripping wet, on the couch. I turned on the hooded desk light, got big towels.

Her lips were blue. Her eyes opened and her teeth were chattering so badly she couldn’t speak. It was a warm night. I poured a shot and held her head up while she drank it. She gagged but she kept it down. I got blankets, covered her. She cried for a long time, softly, as a tired child will cry. I sat beside her and rubbed her forehead with my fingertips until she went to sleep.

After she was asleep, I sat for a long, long time in the dark and I knew, without her telling me, just how it had happened. She had grieved for Ted. But not enough. She had been strongly attracted to me, as I was to her. With a person of her intense capacity for loyalty, it seemed an unthinkable deceit. It made a strong conflict within her. What she had done had seemed to her at the time to be the only solution.

I knew that when she awakened, her reaction would tell me whether or not I had guessed right about her feelings.

I sat there until the eastern sky was gray shot through with a pink threat of tomorrow’s sun. She stirred in her sleep, opened her eyes and looked at me with no alarm or surprise. She held her arms up and I kissed her. It was as natural and expected and unsurprising and sweet as anything I’ll ever know.

“I had a nightmare,” she whispered.

“A long, long bad dream, darling. It’s all over now. For good.”

“Don’t ever say anything to me that you don’t mean, Joe. Ever.”

“Promise.”

“And Joe...”

“Yes, darling.”

“Please. Go away from me for a little while. Way over there. I feel like a hussy. I don’t want to be one.” She grinned. “Not quite yet.”

“We ought to get you back.”

“Isn’t today Saturday?”

“Don’t ask me like that. I always look at my watch when anybody asks me too quickly what day it is. Yes, it’s Saturday.”

“No classes, Joe. I can cook. How do you like your eggs?”

“After a swim at dawn, of course.”

“Then go on out and swim, dear. You’re dressed for it. I’ll call you when it’s ready. How’s the larder?”

“Full of ambrosia.”

“Come here, Joe. Now go swimming. Quickly, Joe. Quickly.”

I swam. She cooked. She called me. I ate. We kissed. We made silly talk. Words are no good. Ever.

That Ted had himself a girl, he did. I was glad he was dead. To be glad for a thing like that gave me a superstitious feeling of eternal damnation. Bad luck. It gave me a shiver. She saw it. We held hands. No more shivers. No more bad luck, I hoped.

During that week, after I rubbed Keyes off our list, we plotted. I could speak more freely because now I could talk about Ted without it rocking her as badly at it had in the beginning.

I said, “We tried one way. I have a hunch that guy you mistrust is just another zany. Now we go at it from the other direction. We forget motive and try opportunity. We back-track on the beach party, the return trip from Tampa, the gun-cleaning episode, Ted’s apparent suicide. Now from the motive viewpoint you brought out that the case is stronger for an outsider.