Chase: Roman

beginning to make me angry.’
        He forced himself to wait a moment and to reply in a measured tone. ‘Okay. But I'll be over at eight, if that's all right. Between now and then, don't answer your door for anyone you don't know, no matter how often he rings.’
        She said, ‘What's the matter?’
        ‘I can't say now,’ he told her. ‘Will you do what I say?’
        ‘Okay,’ she said. ‘See you at eight.’
        Chase paced the room until he began to feel that he was only making the time drag by more slowly than ever. He went to the cupboard and took down his whisky bottle. It had lasted him several days already, but when he began to pour it, he knew that it would have to last several more, for he did not want to be the least bit fuzzy-headed tonight, not if the confrontation was to come soon. He corked the bottle, put it into the cupboard again, closed the cupboard door so that he could not see it, washed out the glass and dried it and put it away.
        He realized, in this single decision, how much things had changed in such a short period of time.
        He bathed, trying to take as long at it as he could, soaping and rinsing more than once.
        He shaved, and then exercised.
        When he looked at the clock, it read a few minutes after five.
        Less than three hours until he could explain the situation to Glenda and offer whatever protection he could provide her. That was not so long, three hours. Except that she might be dead by then.
        

    Ten
        
        She was wearing a short green skirt and a dark blouse the colour of tobacco with a wing collar and puffed sleeves, eight buttons on each long cuff. Her yellow hair was drawn into a pair of pony tails, one just behind each ear, a device which made her, inexplicably, appear both childlike and sophisticated, though Chase supposed a visiting mother would notice only the innocence of the intended childish touch.
        They kissed for a long while after she closed the door, as if their separation had been a few days rather than a matter of a few hours. Chase wondered, as he held her and felt her tongue in his mouth, how such a relationship between a man and a woman could develop in such a short time. It had not been love at first sight, of course, though not much less than that either. In short order, he had progressed from an immature and distant appreciation of her as a woman, through an unfulfilled desire for her as a sex object, through friendship and finally into love of a sort. Though they were not married, and though he could not physically possess her, he felt the confusion of emotion, love and lust and tenderness and a will to dominate her every moment, that supposedly plagued all newlywedded husbands. He imagined the two of them had found such a strong affinity for each other only because, psychologically, each of them gave something that the other required, but he did not want to delve into self-analysis very deeply. He simply wanted to enjoy, while holding most of the guilt at bay.
        ‘Drink?’ she asked when they broke apart.
        ‘No,’ he said. ‘We have some serious talking to do first. Come here.’
        On the couch, side by side, as they had started the previous evening, he said, ‘Has anyone come to the door, anyone that you've never seen before?’
        ‘No one,’ she said.
        ‘Any phone calls?’
        ‘Just yours.’
        ‘Good,’ he said. But it was not a reprieve, only a postponement.
        She took his hand in both of hers and said, ‘Ben, what is it, what's the matter?’
        ‘Nobody believes me,’ he said. ‘Because of Cauvel, the police won't listen to me.’
        ‘I'll listen,’ she said.
        ‘You have to,’ he said, ‘because you're a part of it now.’
        She waited a long time for him to continue, and when he did not say anything more, she said, ‘Maybe I better get those drinks after all.’
        ‘No,’ he said, holding onto her. ‘If I start drinking or delay at all, I'll lose my nerve and not tell you.’ He did not look at her again for twenty minutes, though he told her all of it, even about Operation Jules Verne and the tunnel. And the bamboo grate. And the women, all of it, right through to Judge's latest threat.
        ‘Now I need a drink,’ she said.
        He didn't stop her. When she came back with two, he took his and said, ‘Does this change anything? I guess it has to.’
        ‘Change what?’