Laura (Femmes Fatales) by Vera Caspary Page A

The prose style was knocked right out of him.
    He had written the foregoing between ten o’clock on Wednesday night and four on Thursday afternoon with only five hours’ sleep, a quart of black coffee, and three hearty meals to keep up his strength. I suppose he had intended to fit the story to one of those typical Lydecker last paragraphs where a brave smile always shows through the tears.
    I am going on with the story. My writing won’t have the smooth professional touch which, as he would say, distinguishes Waldo Lydecker’s prose. God help any of us if we’d tried to write our reports with style. But for once in my life, since this is unofficial anyway, I am going to forget Detective Bureau shorthand and express a few personal opinions. This is my first experience with citizens who get their pictures into that part of the funny papers called the Society Section. Even professionally I’ve never been inside a night club with leopard-skin covers on the chairs. When these people want to insult each other, they say darling , and when they get affectionate they throw around words that a Jefferson Market bailiff wouldn’t use to a pimp. Poor people brought up to hear their neighbors screaming filth every Saturday night are more careful of their language than well-bred smart-alecks. I know as many four-letter words as anybody in the business and use them when I feel like it. But not with ladies. Nor in writing. It takes a college education to teach a man that he can put on paper what he used to write on a fence.
    I’m starting the story where Waldo ended . . . In Montagnino’s back yard after the third brandy.
    As we stepped out of the restaurant, the heat hit us like a blast from a furnace. The air was dead. Not a shirttail moved on the washlines of McDougal Street. The town smelled like rotten eggs. A thunderstorm was rolling in.
    “Can I drive you home?”
    “No, thanks; I feel like walking.”
    “I’m not drunk. I can drive,” I said.
    “Have I implied that you’re drunk? It’s my whim to walk. I’m working tonight.” He started off, pounding his stick against the pavement. “Thanks for the feast,” he called as I drove off.
    I took it slowly because my head was still heavy. I drove past the corner where I should have turned for the Athletic Club, and then I knew that I didn’t want to go home. I didn’t feel like bowling or pool, my mind wasn’t sharp enough for poker, and I’ve never sat in the lounge in the two years I’ve lived there. The steel furniture in my bedroom reminded me of a dentist’s office. There wasn’t a comfortable chair in the room, and if you lay on the couch the cover wrinkled under you. These are all the excuses I can find for going to Laura’s apartment that night. Maybe I was just drunk.
    Before I went upstairs, I stopped to raise the top of my car and shut the windows. Later, when the thing that happened caused me to question my sanity, I remembered that I had performed the acts of a sober man. I had the key in my pocket and I let myself in as coolly as if I’d been entering my own place. As I opened the door I saw the first streaks of lightning through the blinds. Thunder crashed. It was followed by the stillness that precedes heavy rain. I was sweating and my head ached. I got myself a drink of water from the kitchen, took off my coat, opened my collar, and stretched in the long chair. The light hurt my eyes and I turned it off. I fell asleep before the storm broke.
    Thunder sounded like a squadron of bombers above the roof. Lightning did not flash away immediately. After a few seconds I saw that it was not lightning at all, but the lamp with the green shade. I had not turned it on. I had not moved from the long chair.
    Thunder crashed again. Then I saw her. She held a rain-streaked hat in one hand and a pair of light gloves in the other. Her rain-spattered silk dress was moulded tight to her body. She was five-foot seven, weighed about one-thirty, dark eyes slightly