She carried the bottle to the round table in the middle of the room and filled the two small glasses with rum. “Come, sit over here,” she said. “It’s more comfortable.” As he moved to a big chair she saw that his eyes were on her protruding stomach. She handed him a glass, sat down, and folded her hands across her middle.
He sat holding his glass, and she said, “Drink it. It’s very good rum.” He smiled at her, a smile she had never seen. She said, “When Eva told me you were here I thought at first I would have you thrown out.”
“I would have come back,” he said. “I had to see you—not that I mistrusted Samuel, but just to prove it to myself.”
“Drink your rum,” she said.
He glanced at her glass.
“You don’t think I’d poison you—” She stopped and was angry that she had said it.
Smiling, he still gazed at her glass. Her anger came through to her face. She picked up her glass and touched her lips to it. “Liquor makes me sick,” she said. “I never drink it. It poisons me.” She shut her mouth tight and her sharp teeth bit down on her lower lip.
Adam continued to smile at her.
Her rage was rising beyond her control. She tossed the rum down her throat and coughed, and her eyes watered and she wiped her tears away with the back of her hand. “You don’t trust me very much,” she said.
“No, I don’t.” He raised his glass and drank his rum, then got up and filled both glasses.
“I will not drink any more,” she said in panic.
“You don’t have to,” Adam said. “I’ll just finish this and go along.”
The biting alcohol burned in her throat and she felt the stirring in her that frightened her. “I’m not afraid of you or anyone else,” she said, and she drank off her second glass.
“You haven’t any reason to be afraid of me,” said Adam. “You can forget me now. But you said you had already.” He felt gloriously warm and safe, better than he had for many years. “I came up to Sam Hamilton’s funeral,” he said. “That was a fine man. I’ll miss him. Do you remember, Cathy, he helped you with the twins?”
In Kate the liquor raged. She fought and the strain of the fight showed on her face.
“What’s the matter?” Adam asked.
“I told you it poisoned me. I told you it made me sick.”
“I couldn’t take the chance,” he calmly said. “You shot me once. I don’t know what else you’ve done.”
“What do you mean?”
“I’ve heard some scandal,” he said. “Just dirty scandal.”
For the moment she had forgotten her will-fight against the cruising alcohol, and now she had lost the battle. The redness was up in her brain and her fear was gone and in its place was cruelty without caution. She snatched the bottle and filled her glass.
Adam had to get up to pour his own. A feeling completely foreign to him had arisen. He was enjoying what he saw in her. He liked to see her struggling. He felt good about punishing her, but he was also watchful. “Now I must be careful,” he told himself. “Don’t talk, don’t talk.”
He said aloud, “Sam Hamilton has been a good friend to me all the years. I’ll miss him.”
She had spilled some rum, and it moistened the corners of her mouth. “I hated him,” she said. “I would have killed him if I could.”
“Why? He was kind to us.”
“He looked—he looked into me.”
“Why not? He looked into me too, and he helped me.”
“I hate him,” she said. “I’m glad he’s dead.”
“Might have been good if I had looked into you,” Adam said.
Her lip curled. “You are a fool,” she said. “I don’t hate you. You’re just a weak fool.”
As her tension built up, a warm calm settled on Adam.
“Sit there and grin,” she cried. “You think you’re free, don’t you? A few drinks and you think you’re a man! I could crook my little finger and you’d come back slobbering, crawling on your knees.” Her sense of power was loose and her vixen carefulness abandoned. “I know you,” she said. “I know your cowardly heart.”
Adam went on smiling. He tasted his drink, and that reminded her to pour another for herself. The bottle neck chattered against her glass.
“When I was hurt I needed you,” she said. “But you were slop. And when I didn’t need you any more you tried to stop me. Take that ugly smirk off your face.”
“I wonder what it is you hate so much.”
“You wonder, do you?” Her caution was almost entirely gone. “It isn’t hatred, it’s contempt. When I was a little girl I knew what stupid lying fools they were—my own mother and father pretending goodness. And they weren’t good. I knew them. I could make them do whatever I wanted. I could always make people do what I wanted. When I was half-grown I made a man kill himself. He pretended to be good too, and all he wanted was to go to bed with me—a little girl.”
“But you say he killed himself. He must have been very sorry about something.”
“He was a fool,” said Kate. “I heard him come to the door and beg. I laughed all night.”
Adam said, “I wouldn’t like to think I’d driven anybody out of the world.”
“You’re a fool too. I remember how they talked. ‘Isn’t she a pretty little thing, so sweet, so dainty?’ And no one knew me. I made them jump through hoops, and they never knew it.”
Adam drained his glass. He felt remote and inspective. He thought he could see her impulses crawling like ants and could read them. The sense of deep understanding that alcohol sometimes gives was on him. He said, “It doesn’t matter whether you liked Sam Hamilton. I found him wise. I remember he said one time that a woman who knows all about men usually knows one part very well and can’t conceive the other parts, but that doesn’t mean they aren’t there.”
“He was a liar and a hypocrite too.” Kate spat out her words. “That’s what I hate, the liars, and they’re all liars. That’s what it is. I love to show them up. I love to rub their noses in their own nastiness.”
Adam’s brows went up. “Do you mean that in the whole world there’s only evil and folly?”
“That’s exactly what I mean.”