Gwen, in Green

She sat on the edge of his desk and touched his shoulder. “Irving King, you’re an old war horse. This office has been your life for too long. And I’m the same way. Sometimes I think how nice it would be, when the alarm goes off, to just throw it out the window and turn over and go back to sleep. But on Saturday and Sunday, when I could sleep late, I’m wide awake at seven, as usual. By Sunday evening, I’m going stir-­crazy. The apartment is too small. There’s no smell of cigars and there’s nothing to do. By Monday morning I feel as if I’m starting a new life when I get on the bus and head downtown. Now just what would we do in retirement? Play checkers?”

“Go to Greece?”

“And have to hire strong Greek boys to carry us up the steps of the Parthenon?” She patted him on the shoulder. “Get to work, old man. It’s all we have.”

“There’s a new condominium going up on the river,” King said. “I’ve got a dollar invested in it. There’s a unit on the first floor—” He cleared his throat and reached for a cigar. “I’d guarantee the smell of good Havana.”

“All right,” she said simply.

“Fine,” he said.

“I think this is what you want,” she said, standing, all business again. “A Mrs. Evelyn Rogers.”

How in the hell could he have forgotten that one? He reached for the folder eagerly, not even noticing that Ruthie had smiled at him and shaken her head fondly before leaving. His mind was worse than he thought, to forget that one. His own Boston Strangler, his own Winnie Ruth Judd. Only it had never been proven.

If he ever did a book, she’d be in it. She just might be the prime attraction. He opened the folder. Cute address: Cutesy, more the word. Mrs. Evelyn Rogers, The Jolly Rogers, Pine Tree Island.

She had been brought to him by her husband, a man considerably older than she, on July 10, 1937. He had caught her fornicating with a local retarded teenager. His investigation had showed only rampant nymphomania, and, later, took on more interesting aspects.

As he read, his memory came back, clear, vivid. She was not a beautiful woman, but she was youthful, twenty-­nine and in her prime. She talked openly about her affairs, and their variety had, he remembered with a wry smile, had the effect of good pornography on his libido. Only his professional detachment had kept him from doing something foolish. That and a truly shocked sorrow at the waste of a life. She had children, two boys and a girl, ranging in age from ten to three years. The oldest, a girl, knew what was happening, although she was often told to play in her bedroom with the younger children and not come out on pain of severe punishment. But she was a totally sexual being, and she spoke of her activities not with shame, but with a sort of detachment, as if some other woman had been involved, not she.

“They come when they know that he is away,” he read. The typescript was faded, and he had to remove his glasses and hold the page close to his face. “If I’m not outside, they whistle. Then I know and I go out.”

“Why, do you suppose?” he’d asked.

“It stops the pain.”

“What pain?”

His interest had been given another jolt by her answer. He’d condensed it in his notes, and it had been transcribed from his rapid scrawl by the efficient Miss Ruth Henley. It had to do, he had gathered, although she was not perfectly clear, with a logging operation. The timber on Pine Tree Point, in 1937, was not virgin, but it was old stands, untouched for a hundred years. She had talked about the constant round of saws and axes, the rumblings of the logging trucks, and the vulgar talk of the loggers. And she’d talked about the trees, how they hurt when the ax bit in, and how it made her want to scream.

It had not all come out in one session. It had been scattered through weeks of treatment, but then it had begun to make a picture and now, as he read, it began to take shape.

She had asked her husband, begged her husband to cease the timbering. But 1937 was a hard year, and, apparently, Paul Rogers desperately needed money. She mentioned the cost of the large house. She said once that Paul was worried about money, something about his northern investments going bad.

“Tell him, Dr. King. Tell him it’s his fault. Tell him I only do it because it hurts. Tell him I’ll stop if he’ll stop the pain.”