Do Evil In Return Read Free

wad of sodden Kleenex left on the chair and the history sheet on Charlotte’s desk. The sheet was blank except for the name and address at the top, written in Miss Schiller’s librarian’s backhand: Mrs. Violet O’Gorman, 916 Olive Street.
    She picked up the history sheet and stood holding it in her bands for more than a minute. Then she crumpled it into a ball and hurled it quite viciously at the wastebasket.

2
    Just as she tried to forget Lewis during office hours, in the evenings she tried to forget her work. She wasn’t entirely successful.
    “You’re jumpy tonight,” Lewis said.
    “Am I?”
    “Could I flatter myself that it’s strictly from joy at having me back?”
    “You could not.”
    “You are glad, though? Aren’t you?”
    “Of course.”
    “I missed you, Charley.”
    There wasn’t the usual banter in his voice. He sounded tired.
    She went over and put her hand on his shoulder. It wasn’t often that she touched him first and on her own initiative. She was very proud; Lewis had to be the aggressor, to make the first move.
    He was in his early forties now, a tall man, so rangy and loose-jointed that he could never fit into any ordinary chair. The one he occupied he’d bought himself and given to Charlotte. It was red leather and didn’t match the gray and lime color scheme of the rest of the sitting room. It stood out, compelled attention. When Lewis wasn’t there the chair was a symbol of him, a discordant note in the restful little room, as Lewis was the discordant note in her life.
    He twisted his head so that her hand was pressed tight between his cheek and his shoulder. She had an irrational feeling that her hand was caught in a crevice between boulders.
    She broke the silence. “Lewis?”
    “Yes, darling.”
    “Perhaps you should have stayed home with Gwen the first night…”
    “I couldn’t,” he said simply. “Let’s change the subject.”
    “All right. How was the trip?”
    “Like any trip without you, long and dull.” He had gone with two other lawyers on a week’s fishing trip in the Sierras. It was an annual, routine affair. Lewis never enjoyed it; he went along merely because it was expected of him. Lewis liked to conform: his defiance of the conventions was purely verbal.
    “I’m glad it was dull. I’ll seem exciting by contrast.” She spoke lightly, but she felt a twinge of pain that was part anger and part jealousy. Minutes with Lewis were few and precious. Yet he had squandered a whole week of them on a fishing trip. I’m getting possessive, she thought. I must watch myself. You can’t own people. I own my car, my house, my clothes—that ought to be enough. It wasn’t enough, though. The car had to have Lewis at the wheel; the clothes had been selected to please him; and she’d bought the house six weeks after she’d met him, not knowing why at the time, merely thinking that her apartment was too cramped and there wasn’t enough privacy.
    The house had a high stone wall on three sides. On the fourth side there was a sweeping view of the city and the harbor. From Lewis’ chair by the picture window you could look down and see the city spread out below, a tangled network of lights all the way down the hill to the sea. The city was medium-sized, large enough to support half a dozen second-rate night clubs, and small enough to pass the word along if you patronized any of them. She and Lewis never went to night clubs or even to movies together. They met at her house—he hid his car in her garage, or left it a block away—or they drove down to the beach at night, as anonymous in the dark as all the other lovers parked on the blowing sand.
    “I like your hair,” Lewis said, raising his head to look up at her. “It’s brown, plain brown. You don’t often see plain brown hair any more; it’s usually tinted red… Charley, you’re not even listening.”
    “I am. You said I had brown hair.”
    “What I really meant was that I love you. Everything about you