The Delicate Prey: And Other Stories

When her ankle ceased to pain her, she began going downstairs for lunch, which was served out on the terrace at a table with a beach umbrella stuck in its center. Prue was regularly late in coming from her studio, and she arrived in her blue jeans, which were caked with clay, with smears of dirt across her face. Because Aileen could not bring herself to think what she really felt, which was that Prue was ungracious, ugly and something of an interloper, she remained emotionally unconscious of Prue’s presence, which is to say that she was polite but bored, scarcely present in the mealtime conversations. Then, too, Aileen was definitely uncomfortable on the terrace. The emptiness was too near and the balustrade seemed altogether too low for safety. She liked the meals to be as brief as possible, with no unnecessary time spent sipping coffee afterward, but it never would have occurred to her to divulge her reasons. With Prue around she felt constrained to behave with the utmost decorum. Fortunately her ankle provided her with a convenient excuse to get back upstairs to her room.

She soon discovered a tiny patio next to the kitchen where heavy vines with sweet-smelling flowers grew up an arbor that had been placed at one side. The air was full of the humming of hundreds of bees that clung heavily to the petals and moved slowly about in the air. After lunch she would pull a deck chair into the arbor’s shade and read until the rain began. It was a stifling, airless spot, but the sound of the bees covered that of the waterfall. One afternoon Prue followed her there and stood with her hands in her hip pockets looking at her.

“How can you take this heat?” she asked Aileen.

“Oh, I love it.”

“You do?” She paused. “Tell me, do you really like it here, or do you think it’s a bloody bore?”

“Why, I think it’s absolutely wonderful.”

“Mm. It is.”

“Don’t you like it?”

Prue yawned. “Oh, I’m all for it. But I keep busy. Wherever I can work, I get on, you know.”

“Yes, I suppose so,” said Aileen. Then she added, “Are you planning on staying long?”

“What the hell do you mean?” said Prue, leaning backward against the house, her hands still behind her. “I live here.”

Aileen laughed shortly. To anyone but Prue it would have sounded like a merry, tinkling laugh, but Prue narrowed her eyes and thrust her jaw forward a bit.

“What’s so funny?” she demanded.

“I think you’re funny. You’re so tied up in knots. You get upset so easily. Perhaps you work too hard out there in your little house.”

Prue was looking at her with astonishment.

“God Almighty,” she said finally, “your I.Q.’s showing, gal.”

“Thank you,” said Aileen with great seriousness. “Anyway, I think it’s fine that you’re happy here, and I hope you go on being happy.”

“That’s what I came to say to you.”

“Then everything’s fine.”

“I can’t make you out,” said Prue, frowning.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” replied Aileen, fingering the pages of her book impatiently. “It’s the most pointless conversation I’ve ever had.”

“That I don’t think,” Prue said, going into the kitchen.

The same evening, when her mother came for her usual after-dinner chat, she looked a little unhappy.

“You don’t seem to be getting on very well with Prue,” she said reproachfully, as she sat down at the foot of the bed.

“Why, we get on perfectly well. Oh. You’re talking about this afternoon, probably.”

“Yes, I am, probably. Really, Aileen. You simply can’t be rude to a woman her age. She’s my guest, and you’re my guest, and you’ve got to be civil to each other. But she’s always civil and I have a feeling you’re not.”

Aileen caught her breath and said, “I’m your guest . . .”

“I invited you here for your vacation and I want things pleasant, and I don’t see the slightest reason why they shouldn’t be.”

Suddenly Aileen cried, “She’s a maniac!”

Her mother rose and quickly left the room.

In the quiet days that followed, the incident was not mentioned by any of them. Aileen continued to haunt the little patio after lunch.