Read Magician's Wife for Free Online

costs a lot, Clay—the only thing in its favor. For the rest, it makes you sleepy, and I didn’t come here to sleep.” Putting the bottle back without letting him open it, she found a Château Margaux and pulled the cork herself. “Claret’s all right,” she said. “It’s light, it leaves your head clear, and goes fine with steak. That other—it’s for the tourists, really.” Such Escoffier talk delighted him, and he spent an enchanted evening, listening to tales about Elly, his beauty, his angelic disposition, how he was loved in the day nursery where she put him each morning on going to work.
    But later, stretched out once more by the fire, she reverted to the future, the first time she had since he brought the subject up. “You know,” she said quietly, taking his hand, “I’m beholden to you for opening my eyes to—everything. The spot that I’m in, Clay. I never realized before what a heads-I-lose-tails-I-can’t-win proposition I’m up against. Because that’s true, isn’t it? That even by marking time I can’t get anything or get anything for Elly, can I? If I try for a settlement now, all I can get is alimony, which stops when I marry you, and an allowance for him. And if I wait, it’s exactly the same, with Elly nowhere, either, unless Alec should—die. Clay, they talk about four-letter words, but that little three-letter one is the worst in the language for me. It’s the truth, though, isn’t it? That once the old man—isn’t here any more Alec has to— die —I must make myself say it—before either one, Elly or I, can—share. Well, as I said, you opened my eyes, and thanks. The next thing is, what now?”
    It was some moments before he said: “I’ve told you what I think. You can’t make an omelet without breaking some eggs. Leave him, go to Reno, marry me—and get on with your life. So far as Elly goes, he’ll be no worse off. I’m not starving to death, I remind you. I’m plenty able to raise him.”
    â€œClay, that touches me so.”
    â€œWill you think it over?”
    â€œI will. I promise. And will you think it over?”
    â€œ... Think what over, Sally?”
    â€œThere must be some other way!”
    â€œWhat’s wrong with this way? My way?”
    â€œBut it seems so awful, Clay! To have my child cut off! Just left out on a limb! With no way to get it—the money that’s rightfully his!”
    â€œIn due time he can inherit!”
    â€œYes, but when is that?”
    â€œFor that you’ll have to ask God.”
    â€œYou’re thinking it over, all right. You have thought it over, and you’ve come to the end of the plank. You’re through—you don’t see that girl any more.”

5
    N EXT EVENING, INSTEAD OF camping by the window, he lit the floor lamps, put on a Tchaikovsky album, and at luxurious ease sat himself down to listen. The 1812, one of his favorites, was banging briskly along when the phone rang. Smiling icily to himself, he let it go on without answering. Romeo and Juliet had started when it rang again, and again he did nothing about it. But twenty minutes later his inside phone rang, and Doris told him: “Lady to see you, sir.” Caught by surprise, he hesitated, then said: “Send her up.” He cut off the music and stood thinking, trying to fathom why Sally, so frightened of being seen, and having a key of her own to come in the back way, should be showing herself now down in the front lobby. Making nothing of it, he went out in the hall to meet her, closing the door after him and resolving she shouldn’t get in, no matter what kind of excuse, what weird, farfetched tale, he would have to come up with. But what stepped from the elevator wasn’t Sally at all, but an apparition in black, with crimson hat, gloves, bag, and shoes, that eyed him for a moment and