A Shroud for Aquarius Read Online Free PDF

tone of voice that didn’t give a damn what one might expect. And then sarcasm finally edged its way in: “However, why should the bereaved friend complain of anyone else’s inappropriate show of mourning when he himself chooses to wear a grinning 1950s television personality, instead of black?”
    She
was in black, but I had a feeling that was her style, not out of respect.
    “I deserved that,” I said, smiling a little. “I found out about Ginnie last night. So I’ve had a chance to adjust to it a little. And I’ll be honest with you. Ginnie and I weren’t close in recent years. I feel the loss, all right. But when someone dies who once was close to you—who was part of your daily life, once upon a time, but who has long since
left
your daily life, a fact to which you adjusted some time ago—well, the loss just isn’t as keenly felt as it should be. As it would be should someone from your current daily life happen to die. I feel a little guilty about that. If Ginnie had died fifteen years ago, it would’ve shattered me. Today, it only saddens me. Saddens, and… confuses me.”
    My confession seemed to have embarrassed her; her composure slipped, just a hair, as she said, “I sympathize with your… feelings, Mr. Mallory. But if you’re looking for someone to… bring you up to date where Ginnie’s concerned, to… helpyou get to know the person she became since
high school,
well… you’ll just have to look elsewhere.”
    “Who could know her better than her business partner? Someone she shared a house with, for Christ’s sake?”
    She stood, removing the cigarette from the holder and stubbing it out, in what I read as a surprising show of anger from a woman whose face remained cool, pale, impenetrable.
    She said, “I didn’t say I didn’t know her. I knew her very well indeed. But I didn’t like her, Mr. Mallory. And you want to put your head on someone’s shoulder and have someone say, ‘There, there,’ and afterward put their head on your shoulder so you can say, ‘There, there,’ and generally be miserable together and purge whatever individual guilt you might feel in a mutual, sloppy show of sentiment, and that’s
fine
… if you liked her. I didn’t.”
    Suddenly I knew something. Or at least thought I did.
    “
You
did once,” I said.
    “What?” Her head jerked back, just a little.
    “Like her. You liked her once.”
    She shrugged. “Sure. We were friendly.” Her fingers searched the desk for her cigarettes, while her eyes looked at me with a cold searching stare. I reached over and pushed the cigarettes, Salems, into the path of her fingers.
    “You lived together,” I said.
    She sat down. “We lived together, yes.” She lit up again, but without the holder this time.
    “Ginnie was an experimenter,” I said. “With people as well as drugs. You were lovers, weren’t you?”
    She smoked for a while, deciding whether or not to answer.
    Then she said, “We were for a while. But like most gamblers…” The enigmatic smile returned, seeming less enigmatic now. “… eventually she cheated.”
    “Who with?”
    “Does it matter?”
    “Just wondering.”
    She laughed mirthlessly, smoke curling out her nostrils, dragonlike. “You’re a nosy little bastard.”
    “We all have our little quirks.”
    “You’re a nasty little bastard, too.”
    “I didn’t mean that to sound nasty,” I said truthfully. “And I’m not shocked, or disapproving of your relationship with Ginnie. I feel a little naive for not figuring it out a long time ago, though.”
    She said, meaning to be nasty, I think, “You
were
born in Iowa, weren’t you?”
    “Yeah. There’s no law against it. Some people are born
and
die here. Ginnie, for instance.”
    “It was that jerk she married.”
    “What?”
    “That’s who she cheated on me with. That hippie jerk she married.”
    “She didn’t ever take his last name, did she?”
    “No. She was independent, our Ginnie. His name was O’Hara. John