Free Area of Suspicion by John D. MacDonald

heavy skirt and scented her familiar perfume.
    “You’ve changed your hair,” I said inanely.
    “Oh, Gevan, what a sparkling greeting!” When she said my name I saw the remembered way she said the v, white teeth biting at her underlip, holding the consonant sound just a bit longer than anyone else ever did.
    I tried to take one of her hands and shake it in polite formality, but her other hand found my wrist, long warm fingers wrapping tightly around it, and she stood like that, smiling at me, tall and rounded, that black hair sheening like spilled ink.
    “It’s nice to see you, Niki.” My voice was husky.
    She closed her eyes for a moment. “It’s been a bit too long,” she said as she released my hand and turned away with an uncharacteristic awkwardness. I saw she shared my nervousness. It made her more plausible, made her more believable as the girl who had said she would marry me so long ago. She had betrayed me, and in her manner was awareness of that. Somehow, I had fallen into the habit of attributing to her a perfect poise, a bland denial of any guilt. To see her now, unsure of herself, uncertain of her ground, even perhaps a bit afraid of me, destroyed that false image of her. It was right she should feel guilt. In some obscure way she had destroyed Ken. She was the evil luck of the Dean brothers. And the warmth I felt for a few moments faded.
    Perhaps she sensed that. She turned with a controlled smile and said, “You’re looking preposterously healthy, Gevan.”
    “I’m a beach boy. A muscle-flexer.”
    “With no dissipations? I’m quite good at martinis thesedays.” It made me remember the burnt-acid abominations she had mixed for us long ago.
    “Prove it.”
    I sat and watched her at the small bar. The room was silent. Ice tinkled. She measured with small girl intentness. She swirled the cocktail in the crystal bubble of the shaker, poured carefully, brought me the first drink. I stood up and took it and sipped. “You’re better than you used to be,” I said.
    She sat opposite me with her drink. We were walking a polite and formal line. On either side were quicksands.
    “You have a very nice home, Niki.”
    “It’s too big, actually. Ken wanted a big house. I’ll sell it, I guess.”
    “And then what?”
    “Go away. Get sort of—straightened out. And come back here. Stanley says I should take an active interest in the company.”
    The silence grew. It was not a comfortable silence. There was a tingling to it, a nervous suspense. I liked her hair better the way she used to wear it. The present effect made her face look more fragile, but it also gave her a look of false composure.
    “Do you like Florida, Gevan?”
    “Very much.”
    “You’ll go back, I suppose.”
    “Yes, of course.”
    And again there was the silence of the big room. She sipped her drink. I saw her round throat work. She looked down into her glass, frowning. “We could talk and talk and talk and never say a thing—if we keep on this way.”
    “This is the safe way.”
    She looked up sharply. “Is it? Then I’ll say it. I should never have married Ken.”
    The silence came back but it was altered. It had changed.
    “Don’t step out of character,” I said. “Remember, you’re the shattered widow.”
    “I know I hurt you. I know how badly.”
    “Do you?”
    “Don’t try to hurt back. Not right now. Later, but not right now. Let me say this.”
    “I’ll listen to you.”
    “Six months after I married him I knew it was a mistake. But he loved me, and I’d hurt enough people. I tried to make him as happy as I could.”
    “Not very successfully, from what I hear.”
    “Then you know how he was the last few months. I couldn’t help that, Gevan. I tried. God, how I tried! But he—sensed how it had all gone wrong. He guessed I was pretending. But I never told him I regretted marrying him.”
    I set my empty glass aside. “That raises a pretty question, Niki. Why did you marry him?”
    “For a long time