Someone Is Bleeding Read Online Free

And I pretty well succeeded except for a stray conjecture here and there.
    The Malibu house was a lush two-story affair that rambled all over a hillside and ended up like a luxurious animal crouched on a cliff, peering down at the pounding surf way down below across the highway. I imagined that the living-room windows were tightly fastened because the back porch was air.
    I felt nervous as we stood on the front porch waiting for the door to open. Years had passed. And now I was entering Jim’s life again, with the only tongue that could ever scathe him. And, more important, with another of his women on my arm. Stab in the back number two, I was thinking. A maid opened the door and we entered the high-ceilinged hallway.
    It was quite a place. Thick broadloom, everything smart and rich. Jim’s taste, all right, I could see that.
    ”Well . . .”
    And heard him. I turned and saw him standing, one foot below the other on the step that led to the raised living-room. Staring at me.
    Prophetic, I thought, that the last time I had seen him and this first time again, the expression I saw was devoid of all concealment. With not enough time to combat shock. It was Jim Vaughan in the raw looking at me. The look had surprise in it. Surprise, and, no hiding it, although he did his best thereafter, distinct and obvious displeasure.
    “David!”
    The pose was back. His hand holding mine was firm. The smile, the look was one of pleasure.
    “If this isn’t a coincidence,” he was saying. “How are you, Jim?” I said.
    No need to ask. He was in fine shape. From his well trimmed head of red hair, down through his well-shaven, well-fed face, through his maroon dinner jacket, and down to his shiny, dark maroon shoes. Jim was all right. I almost felt like a tramp in my old jacket, one he’d seen at college no less. And that feeling was a new one for me. When I was with Jim especially.
    I’d always felt at least equal, if not superior.
    “What are you doing out here?” he was asking me.
    His arm around Peggy’s waist. Obviously. She looked a little pained but she didn’t move away. The move made me feel strange. As if with one calm, assured gesture, Jim was removing her from my sphere.
    “Writing,” I said.
    “Oh yes, of course,” he said, as if he didn’t know it. “You wrote.”
    His tendency towards smugness that I’d taken delight in puncturing at school had now blossomed into a full-fledged snobbishness. This, I suspected, was progress to Jim.
    Then came a move which sort of put down the groundwork for the coming months
    “Peggy, I’ve got someone you must meet,” Jim said.
    That was the opener. There were other words, quickly spotted. But the kicker was me standing alone in the hallway. A few seconds after I’d met a guy who’d been a good friend years before, I’d been dismissed that easily. Jim Vaughan discarding the past like a scab. He’d said, “We’ll have to have a long talk,” but I knew it was only words.
    I saw him wedge Peggy into a mass of people standing up near a large fireplace which was crackling with orange flames. Peggy looked toward me once, apologetically. But it didn’t much ease my irritation.
    I went up the small staircase and into the huge living-room. Just as expected. Lush. High-beamed ceiling, thick, wall-to-wall carpeting, huge, solid color furniture, copper lamps. Jim had it.
    I looked around. At first I thought there would surely be someone I had known from college. He couldn’t have discarded them all, he knew so many. If nothing else, there would be Audrey. She and I had been minor buddies at college. She wasn’t too pretty a girl. She made up for it though. So well you hardly ever knew she wasn’t particularly attractive. Something inside. Not many people have it.
    No Audrey. I kept walking around adding unto myself a drink and a plate of well-catered canapes, a high-class antipasto. I stood, back to a wall-high picture window and surveyed the room full of affluent strangers.