Free Dark on the Other Side by Barbara Michaels Page A

that I will not deny you.”
    She spun on her heel, her skirts belling out like a
monstrous purple flower, and stalked toward the door. Michael arranged
his facial muscles into a conciliatory smile, but Andrea was not
disarmed. She had a parting word for him, too.
    “As for you—you are a mocker and a doubter….”
    An uncanny transformation came over voice and face, as
the first trailed off into silence and the other lost its rigid anger.
The old woman’s throat worked hideously as she struggled to speak. When
the words finally came, they were shocking because of their
softness—faint and whispering, like a child’s voice calling out in the
terror of a nightmare.
    “Help,” Andrea said. “Please…help…”
    Too amazed to move, Michael stood rooted, staring at her,
and in another second the act was over. The wrinkled face snapped back
into its malevolent expression and Andrea stamped out of the room,
leaving a silence that vibrated.
    “Whew,” Michael said feebly. “She’s really something,
isn’t she?”
    Gordon removed himself from the sideboard, against which
he had been leaning, and sauntered toward Michael, holding out one of
the glasses. The incident, which had shaken Michael, seemed to have
removed some of Gordon’s tension. He was clearly amused.
    “Sit down and have a drink, in that order. That’s what I
love about Andrea. She always provides me with an excuse to have
another drink.”
    Michael laughed and followed his host’s suggestions.
    “How does she get home?” he asked.
    He was about to add the obvious witticism, but there was
no need; his eyes met Gordon’s and they both grinned.
    “Not by broomstick,” Gordon said. “Believe it or not. No,
she walks everywhere she goes; the old bitch is as tough as they come.
I’d have ordered the car out for her if I hadn’t known, from past
experience, that she’d refuse it. With commentary.”
    “That I can believe. Why does she dislike you so much?”
    “I can think of about ten good reasons,” Gordon said
promptly. “Six pathological, three socioeconomic, and one—well, maybe
it’s psychotic too.” He tilted his head back and finished his drink in
one long swallow, rising as soon as it was gone. “Another?”
    “No, thanks.”
    Michael contemplated his barely touched glass with some
constraint. It was coming now; and he couldn’t refuse to listen. Just
as one human being to another, he owed Gordon that much. And as a
potential biographer…Maybe the best thing he could do for Gordon was
get him started talking.
    “She hates you because of Mrs. Randolph.”
    “Why not call her Linda?” Gordon came back to the couch
and sat down. “You’re a perceptive young man, aren’t you?”
    “It doesn’t require much perception to see that.”
    “No, you’re right. It sticks out like a sore thumb.”
Gordon’s shoulders relaxed as if an invisible burden had been lifted
from them. The glance he gave Michael was a compound of apology and
relief. “Sorry I said that.”
    “I’m not looking for juicy tidbits for a best seller.”
    “I know. Thanks.”
    They sat in silence for a few minutes, and then Gordon
sat up straighter.
    “Okay. Professionally or otherwise it’s damned good of
you to listen to this. Frankly, I’m at my wits’ end. I don’t know what
to do—and this is one thing I must do right.”
    “I understand.”
    “I think you do. You see,” Gordon said, staring down at
his glass, “I love her.” He gave a queer, smothered laugh. “The oldest,
tritest cliché in the language. From a writer, at that, a man
who’s supposed to know something about words. But that’s it. That’s
what it comes down to, when you strip away all the verbiage. I love her
and I won’t let her go.” “Go?”
    “Not physically. Although she has tried…I mean retreat,
withdraw into some dark world of her own. That’s what she’s trying to
do.”
    “Neurotic? Or psychotic?”
    “Words, words, words,” Gordon snapped; his suave