The Scarlet Letters Read Online Free PDF Page B

solemnly.
    â€œHow about to me?” demanded Nikki.
    There was much laughter at their table, in a rather soprano key. Ellery watched Dirk with care. He did not like what he saw, and when they separated in the Lawrence lobby he managed to whisper to Nikki, “Watch out for squalls.”
    Dirk insisted on working all day Sunday, and on Monday morning, in a new hat and with a light step, Martha left for the theater “to find out,” as she grimaced to Nikki, “how much money we lost last week.” The Alex Conn play was tapering off after a fairish run, and Martha was looking around for a fall production.
    The squall threatened that very morning.
    Dirk’s exhilaration left the apartment with Martha. His dictation floundered and sank. Nikki tried desperately to resuscitate him. Years of working for a writer had taught her a whole manual of first-aid tricks. She finally gave up.
    â€œYou couldn’t expect to keep this pace indefinitely, Dirk,” she said matter-of-factly. “Let’s knock off and take a walk by the river for an hour. I walk Ellery regularly, like a dog.”
    But Dirk’s only response was a mutter as he turned to his portable bar. “I’ll be all right. What I need is a drink.”
    At noon Martha phoned and Nikki felt a great fear. Dirk’s mood was unrelieved black by now, and the slow turn of his head as Nikki said, “It’s Martha, Dirk,” seemed to her to be moved by something lethal.
    â€œWhere are you?” Dirk growled.
    â€œAt the theater, darling. How are things going?”
    â€œWhat are you doing?”
    â€œGoing over the treasurer’s report. Dirk, I think we ought to close–What’s the matter?”
    â€œMatter? Nothing. When are you coming home?”
    â€œRight now, darling, if you want me to.”
    â€œI don’t want you to do anything. You have your work–”
    â€œI’m on my way,” said Martha.
    With Martha’s return, Dirk’s mood melted. He dictated at high speed for the rest of the day.
    Tuesday was a repetition of Monday.
    On Wednesday the inevitable happened. Martha could not come home at the psychological moment. She was tied up at the theater in a tangle of conferences preparatory to closing the play. And this time Dirk’s mood froze hard. By the time Martha got back to the apartment he was drunk–so drunk the two women had to help him to bed.
    â€œPoor Nikki,” Martha said. The old dead calm had settled over her. “I don’t know why you should have to go through all this. It’s hopeless.”
    â€œIt’s not hopeless!” Nikki said hysterically. “Not so long as I can get him so drunk he passes out. I’m not going to give up, Martha, I’m not!”
    She managed to struggle through the rest of the week.
    On Sunday Martha and Dirk drove up to Connecticut for dinner with Dirk’s publisher, and Nikki felt as if she had been released from a psychopathic ward.
    â€œI don’t know what’s the matter with him,” she told Ellery as they wandered down lower Fifth Avenue towards Washington Square Park in the quiet sun. “He’s like two people of opposite temperaments in one body. He’ll be way up one minute and in the blackest depths the next. He’ll race along dictating really good stuff for fifteen minutes, then all of a sudden he peters out, nothing comes, and he sinks into a kind of witless sluggishness, as if he were doped. Sometimes he’s enthusiastic and naive, like a little boy, and in the next breath he’s as bitter and disillusioned as a sick old man. I thought you were hard to live with, Ellery, but compared with Dirk you’re Little Merry Sunshine.”
    â€œI care for this less and less,” mumbled Ellery. “How about you pulling out?”
    â€œI can’t quit on Martha now, Ellery. And I do have one consolation–I’m not married to him.”
    Ellery was