This Sweet Sickness by Patricia Highsmith Page B

present, and explain that Gerald had wanted to see the note to make sure she was really returning it. She would tell him how much she wanted to keep it, because it was from him.
    On New Year’s Day, David awakened in his house from an unrefreshing sleep with a dream of Annabelle’s letter still damnably in his head. He had seen every word in his dream, and she had said that she loved him, she had put herself in his hands, asked him to make plans for her freedom from Gerald and promised to do anything that he proposed. And David awakened to this gigantic trickery of his own dreaming processes, to the empty house, to the first hours of a new year, stunned and shaken. It seemed a bad omen. Never before had he had a “bad dream” in his house. But later that morning as he was polishing brass and silver, it occurred to him that he could as well take the dream as a good omen as a bad. Perhaps such a letter was on its way to him. It had been stupid to feel downcast, simply because he hadn’t the letter in his hands. This more cheerful attitude stayed with him, even for several days after he went back to Mrs. McCartney’s and the factory.
    Twice David saw Effie Brennan at the boardinghouse, both times as he was returning from work around five-thirty. She came to visit Mrs. Beecham. The first time, Effie had a blossoming geranium in a pot, sheltered from the cold by a green paper wrapping that was open at the top. She had asked David to come upstairs to say hello to Mrs. Beecham with her, and David had politely declined, politely asked Effie how she had been, and she asked him the same thing, and that had been that. The second time Effie had been standing in the front hall, looking down at the mail on the wicker table as if she expected to find a letter there for herself, and as he closed the front door, she whirled around and smiled at him.
    â€œWhy, hello, David. We meet again. There’s a package for you.”
    He picked up the little package, a book he had ordered from New York. They chatted, saying nothing. The weather was cold, and it would get worse. David felt as guilty in her presence as if he had committed a grave and shameful offense against her. It was that she knew—at any rate, she believed—that his mother was dead, though this fact and the fact that she had told him so to his face did not plainly come to David’s mind as he confronted her. He looked at her hair, short but fixed in wide curls that rose crisply around her dark blue beret, hair that was almost the same color as Annabelle’s with its touch of red, and he remembered that Annabelle’s hair, too, was short now, though he always thought of it as long, the way it had been in La Jolla. David could not face Effie’s clear, direct eyes.
    â€œBy the way, your portrait’s got the fixative on it now,” she said. “If you’d like to have it, it’s yours. If you don’t want it, no offense taken.”
    â€œI’d like very much to have it.” He ground his palm on the newel post.
    â€œWhy don’t you stop by some evening?”
    â€œThanks very much, I will.” He smiled, then began to climb the stairs.
    She followed him. He opened his door, went in, and was about to close it when she said his name.
    â€œThere’s something else I wanted to say to you,” she said quietly. “Can I come in a minute?”
    With a small, nervous sigh of exasperation, he stepped aside for her, closed the door which put them in darkness until he crossed the room with two long steps and pushed the button of the lamp on his writing table.
    â€œOh!” she said, looking about. “I didn’t realize you had such a big room. And don’t they keep it nicely for you!”
    He nodded, slowly unbuttoning his overcoat. “Would you like to sit down?”
    â€œNo, I won’t stay.” Her eyes had fixed on his face again. “David, it’s about that night at my