Someone Is Bleeding Read Online Free Page B

my stomach. I’ve got a temper. I’ll be the last to deny that.
    Peggy kept looking at me when she could, trying to smile. But Jim kept closing up the group so that his back was to me. I looked at the back of his neck. Jim Vaughan, I thought, my old buddy. You dirty, smug, son of a bitch.
    Why didn’t she come to me, excuse herself? I figured that she was afraid to. She was a timid girl really. She could be taken advantage of.
    I listened to the talk awhile. Then when my arm muscles felt like rigid glass I just moved around and grabbed Peggy’s hand.
    “Come here. Peggy,” I said aloud. “There’s someone you must meet.”
    “I could feel their stares on me as I pulled her away
    “That wasn’t very polite,” she said.
    I took her over to the small open portion of the floor where a few couples were dancing to record music.
    It wasn’t polite to bring me here and ditch me, either,” I said.
    “I didn’t do anything,” she said. “He took me over.”
    ”No, you never do anything,” I said. “Peggy Lister, victim of fate “
    She tried to draw away. I tightened my hold. “You’re going to dance with me,” I said.
    She was quiet then. Her mouth was a resigned line, parenthesized. She held herself stiffly.
    “My old friend Jim Vaughan,” I said.
    No answer.
    “Peggy.”
    “What?”
    “Do you want to meet the person I was going to introduce you to?”
    No answer.
    “Do you?”
    “Who is it?” she asked, with false patience.
    “Me,” I said. “I’m all alone.”
    Her eyes on me. And softness coming back. I felt her hand on my shoulder tighten. “Davie,” she said softly.
    “How do you do,” I answered.
    Later. About. Jim taking her. Then me dancing with her. And both of us standing by, around eleven, while Dennis danced with her. Both of us trying to put on an air of Auld Lang Syne.
    “I suppose Peggy has told you about our marriage plans,” Jim said. Casually. Jim loved to flick off bombshells.
    “No,” I said, keeping it casual even though it killed me. “She didn’t say anything.”
    “Well, it’s understood,” he said. The dampener. And was that a little threatening in his voice?
    “Does Audrey understand?” I asked.
    The twitching that presages a well-reserved smile.
    “She understands,” said Jim Vaughan.
    “The way Linda understood.” I said.
    Another twitch, without a smile this time. I knew he remembered as I did the time at college when I’d started to date Linda. Linda, who everybody but myself considered Jim’s un-ringed fiancee. And Jim had taken me into the Black and Gold Inn one afternoon and given me the low-down. Told me, just as casually, that he and Linda were going to be married. Although Linda didn’t know it. Although Linda later on left him cold.
    ”That was a childish thing,” Jim was saying now. “I’m past childish things”
    I nodded. “I see,” I said. Then I said, “I hate to say it Jim but I’m in love with Peggy.”
    No sign. No hint. He gazed at me like an exterminator, sighting on his prey.
    I smiled thinly. “I know it isn’t very guest-like for me to tell you,” I said, “Especially after what happened with Linda but . . . well, there it is.”
    He looked at me as if making some sort of decision. His grayish-blue eyes examined me carefully through the lenses of his glasses. His thickish lips pursed slightly as he deliberated.
    He decided.
    “Come in here, David,” he said. Father about to tell his son that the birds do more than fly and the bees buzz.
    He led the way to the library. He ushered me in. The door closed off the sound of the party. He locked the door. We stood together in the quietude, surrounded by the literature of the ages, all dusty.
    “Sit down, David,” he said.
    I sat. I didn’t know what to say. I decided to let him play the scene his own way.
    “What has Peggy told you about herself?” he asked.
    I sat quietly a moment, trying to figure out what his angle was. Jim was always trying for an angle. It might