Slay Bells by Eunice Mays Boyd

Author:Eunice Mays Boyd [EUNICE MAYS BOYD with ELIZABETH REED ADEN]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Level Best Books
Published: 2021-12-02T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter Three

She was calling again. Might as well get it over. There’d be no peace until he did. There mustn’t be a repetition of that Sunday she’d pounded and pounded on his door and at last begun to whisper like an animal. She was an animal, of course—like his mother…

Drew turned the knob and stepped in quickly to get it over with.

As usual, the smell of her and her belongings and the heavy perfume she wore rose up like something tangible. It hit him with the same hard impact as the sight of her in the welter of flowers and satin hangings that made up her lair. No doubt she thought of it as a nuptial bower…

“You wanted to consult me?” he asked crisply.

She was standing by the bed—he always thought of her as she, not as Glenna, or as his wife—in a dull gold peignoir, with her back to him, the gold carried up to the top of her head by the glints in her hair. As usual, it was loose, gold-tinted, softly curling brown about her tanned shoulders. Someone must have told her what a beautiful back she had. Or she was building up to the climax of turning her face. She was an artist, really, in her way. Unless you preferred to call that sort of thing the tricks of her trade. No need to dignify it.

He waited at the door. If only she wouldn’t touch him. He fixed his eyes on a great tub of giant poinsettias one of his clients had sent her for Christmas, but he couldn’t keep them fixed.

Glenna was turning slowly away from the bed. Everything she did seemed to have a slow, deep rhythm that shook him. Perhaps just another trick of her trade, something she might have learned from Red or Brooks or Irving, or anyone else there might have been, like that lawyer fellow…

The side of her face was toward him now—the blunt, short nose, the full lips, the long-lashed eyes half-closed…

Three-quarter face, and pink lips parted in a lovely, slow smile. Had she schooled herself to smile, no matter what? Or was she just good-natured and kind? She’d been called “kind” on enough occasions… she and his mother.

She started toward him, and he drew himself in and upward, folding his arms.

Glenna laughed. She kept coming closer, her perfume stronger. “No wonder the kids used to call you Turtle. Remember, Drew?”

A foot away she stopped. “You’re a handsome brute. You were even then. I’ve seen plenty of tow heads. But you—wow! And now, in a way, you don’t look any older, just more distinguished and—expensive looking. Why, we were actually married before I found out your hair was really white. It was so nearly white before, it sort of sneaked up on you. Just think of not knowing the color of your husband’s hair before you were married.” She paused, still looking up, and her smiling face darkened with reproach. “If you call it married.”

“Go down to City Hall and look at the records, Missus Lang—”

“You know that’s not what I mean.

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