This Sweet Sickness Read Free Page B

with potted, blossoming plants of all kinds.
    â€œThere’s not hardly any more room, is there, David?” she said with a laugh. Then she held up a finger warningly. “There’s Effie now.”
    â€œI’d better go.” David unzipped his duffel bag, shielding it slightly with his body, though Mrs. Beecham probably could not have seen what was in it at this distance, and put the folded bedjacket carefully into it. “I know she’ll be crazy about that,” he said, standing up. “Well, until Monday morning. You take care of yourself, Mrs. Beecham.”
    The old lady seemed in a trance of expectation at the sound of the girl’s approaching footsteps, and did not reply to David who awkwardly awaited one word from her as dismissal. Then the knock came, and Mrs. Beecham sang out for her to come in.
    She fairly burst into the room, her arm full of gold-colored flowers, and David might have retreated out the door without being seen, if he had been ruder or quicker.
    â€œNow here’s your box,” Mrs. Beecham said excitedly, taking the silver-and-white striped box from the girl’s arm. “Put it in, it looks nicer.”
    â€œHi, there,” said Effie, smiling broadly. “So the box was for you.”
    â€œMy mother,” said David. “Thanks very much for troubling about it.” He unzipped the bag and whisked the bedjacket out.
    Effie helped him, unnecessarily, to wrap the bedjacket in the piece of tissue that was in the box. Their hands brushed and David drew his back quickly. The girl looked at him.
    He tucked the box under his arm. “I’ll be going, Mrs. Beecham. Thanks again.” He nodded to the girl. “Good-bye.” Then he closed the door on Mrs. Beecham’s “Drive carefully, David,” and on the girl’s alert and staring eyes. He heard their rather whining, female voices as he went down the stairs. He supposed Mrs. Beecham would be telling her what a fine young man he was. He knew that several of the roomers, behind his back, called him “The Saint.” It was annoying, and David tried to forget it.
    David took a highway northward. Dusk was falling with a swiftness that meant the beginning of winter, and David was glad. He loved the night better than the day, despite his occasional melancholic moments at night, and he loved winter better than summer. Now in the car, heading for home, he allowed himself to daydream about the evenings to come, sitting by his fireside with books, or working on furniture down in the cellar, or lying on the floor in front of the fireplace listening to music in the dark. To hell with the flowers of summer, cut roses that perished in less than a week. When he looked out his living room windows, he could see green ivy, strong and dark, clinging to the rough stone of the house’s foundation. He had seen ivy embalmed in ice, still green and alive. It asked for no care, though he gave it some care, and it endured through summer and winter.
    At a crossroads of a town called Ballard, about a mile from his house, David stopped at a butcher’s shop and bought a steak and some hamburger meat. At another store he bought fresh rolls, salad greens, a couple of pears, and some imported mustard of a kind he had never tried. And at a liquor shop next door, he bought two bottles of Pouilly-Fuissé and a case of Frascati. Then he drove on, turned onto a narrow tar road and then onto a dirt road. Woods of pine trees grew on either side. The car rattled the boards of a little bridge over a stream, and then at the next slight curve, his headlights made the white jambs of his windows flash briefly, like a welcoming hail.
    There were no other houses around. David’s house was of stone and brick, and had a disproportionately tall chimney at one end, as if the chimney had been built for a house one story higher than this. The color was a dull brown with here and there a shade of gray—the color