You Live Once Read Free

opened the closet door again. I forced myself to kneel and touch her ankle. Her flesh was cold—a special kind of coldness. And within the closet, mingled with the muskyscent of the perfume she used, there was the dank, cloyed odor of the dead.
    After a time, I pushed more of my clothing out of the way and turned on the closet light. And I saw what was around her neck.
    Back in the fall when I had purchased some shirts, an energetic salesman had sold me a red fabric belt with an arrangement of brass rings rather than a buckle. It wasn’t the sort of thing I usually buy. I believe I have worn it twice. The last I had seen of it, it was hanging from a belt and tie rack on the inside of my closet door.
    Now it was around Mary Olan’s neck, the brass of the rings biting into the tender flesh at the side of her throat, the flesh above the belt darkened and grotesquely swollen. The long red end of the belt hung down across her shoulder and between her breasts. She still wore last night’s dress, a sleeveless, strapless affair with a gunmetal top and full white skirt. She sat back in the corner of the closet, propped up, her head canted to the right. One leg was out straight—it was that foot I had first seen. Her other leg was sharply bent. Her white skirt had slid up her thighs exposing the white sheen of diaphanous panties contrasting with the dark tan of her legs. Her right hand was on the floor, palm upward, fingers curled. Her left hand was in her lap, hidden by the folds of the skirt.
    I found after a time that I could look at her more calmly. The closet fight glinted on one gold hoop earring. Careful examination told me nothing more than that she was dead, and had died by violence. These lips, hideous now, had been warm when I had kissed them. These arms had been around me. These brown legs had walked ahead of me, the white skirt swinging, and she had looked back over her shoulder, with a quick wry glint of smile. She had looked good last night, and she had known it.
    I closed the closet door for the second time. The presence of the body was like an oppressive weight. I knew only that I wanted it out of there, wanted to take it outof my apartment and put it in some other place. I could not think clearly while she was there.
    I thought of phoning the police and tried to imagine myself carrying off that particular conversation. “Two men were here asking about Miss Olan. I just found her in my closet, dead, strangled with my belt.” I’d seen a lot of her lately and I’d been with her last night. I had been drinking, but I wouldn’t be able to prove how little. The two officers could testify that I had been in bed, and was so hard to awaken that I could have been sleeping off a blind drunk. The door had been locked.
    The alternative was just not plausible. I had gone to bed and gone to sleep. Somebody had brought her in. She had been alive when brought in, so she must have been strangled here. And I had slept through all of it.
    Yet somebody had done just that. Somebody who had hated her, and me. Somebody who would like to have me as dead as Mary Olan. It was not good to think about that kind of hate.
    I dressed slowly and made a pot of coffee. I drank the coffee too hot, scalding my mouth. The cup rattled on the saucer when I set it down. I could feel time passing while I struggled with my decision. I reached for the phone several times, but never quite got to the point of making the call. I did not dare face the police with the feeble, implausible truth. When I checked my watch I found to my surprise that an hour had passed since I had found the body. I believe it was that hour which weighed the scales. I told myself it was too late to phone the police now. I knew I had to get the body out of there.
    Once I was able to face that as a specific problem, my mind began to work better. I mechanically made my bed and cleaned up the few dishes I had used, while I perfected a plan that should work properly. While I was