The Three Sirens by Irving Wallace Page A

day, on the Riviera, I felt it was right,” Miss Mitchell was saying. “I had rushed off like a frightened schoolgirl and he had the love to follow me, still determined to spring his question. But I was more settled, and when we drove back to Cannes, I was sure it was solved and I would say yes—I would say yes, and Christ, get it over with, get on with the happy ending. But the sun was still out and he wanted us to dress for the beach, get some of it, have cocktails on the beach. So I changed in the cabana, and then he did, and when he came out I felt I was going to become ill, upchuck, I mean it. The sonofabitch was wearing bikini trunks—I’d never seen him like that before—so gross—so animal—he, as a person, was no different, he was the same—but that other made it different. I couldn’t look at him, and then he sprawled out next to me, and right there he blurted it out—proposed—get married right away—and I knew what that meant—and I started to cry, and ran off to the hotel. The doctors kept him out—but what could I say?—and anyway, look at my condition—that was the breakdown, as you damn well know—that started it, that thing—that was the beginning—”
    The end, that was the end, Rachel thought to herself.
    They had found the lonely stretch of beach north of Carmel, and parked among the trees, and he had helped her down the steep slope to the sand. It was warm on the beach, and the water rippled gently in the moonlight. They kicked off their shoes, and padded along the surf, hand in hand. She knew that he would propose, this big sensitive man, so in love with her, and she with him, and she kept her silence, and he proposed. She had gone into his arms, thinking at last, at last, thinking not a second beyond this bliss, only nodding her head as he whispered endearments.
    He wanted to celebrate. He wanted to go into the water with her. She wondered how that was possible. They had no suits. And he had said gayly that they needed no suits now that they were practically married. Bewildered at what was happening within her, she had dumbly assented, and wandered off behind the jutting rock to undress, and had unbuttoned one blouse button, and frozen, and stood there trembling, chilled and trembling for more than five hundred seconds. And then she had heard her name and heard the movement of him, and rushed around the rock to explain, somehow explain, and found him in nature’s state as he had expected her to be. The look of sheer horror on her face had instantly wiped the carefree smile from his own. She had stared at the massive hairy chest, and involuntarily, as if in a dream, had lowered her gaze … yes, Miss Mitchell, yes … and she had run off through the sand, falling, rising, running, with his shouts pursuing her.
    When he had returned to the car, clothed, she was waiting, dry-eyed and controlled, and all the way home, the long, long way home, they were terribly reasonable and intellectual about it, so that by the time morning came, and Los Angeles appeared through the smog, it was understood that the fault had been his own. He should have known better, you see. Women are different, more highly strung, more emotional, you see. Men tend to barge ahead, be impetuous, forgetting. Her profession had nothing to do with her frail womanhood. She had given a pledge of marriage, and had been overwhelmed and overwrought. Agreed? They would be married, everything would iron itself out. It always does. I love you, Rachel. I love you, Joe. It’ll work out, Rachel. I know, Joe. Better start thinking of the date, Rachel. I will, I will, Joe. Tomorrow night, then? Tomorrow night.
    There followed a period of four months of tomorrow nights, some appointments kept, some not kept. Joseph Morgen had pressed for the wedding date. Rachel had used every device known in the annals of femininity to avoid any date. Her defenses were built on emergency cases, a burden of free clinic work, psychiatric papers to