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That Monday, Effie Perine went home at three o’clock.
Spade sat at his desk and rolled a cigarette. He had trouble with it: he forgot to keep the depression in the middle. Flecks of tobacco stuck to the ends of his fingers. He smoked more rapidly than usual and then stubbed out the butt in the heavy glass ashtray with a harsh, grinding twist of his hand. He sat there, looking at the door, until there was no more light from the window behind him. The lamps in the office cast muddy halos. Spade switched them off, one by one, as he left.
***
On Tuesday, the girl was back but quiet. She stayed the whole day but made no unnecessary moves: everything that got done got done in the straightest line possible. A bullet would have made more detours.
Iva Archer called twice. Spade talked to her both times, and the receiver left a pink impression on his cheek and along the slab of his jaw. He ran one finger up and down it afterwards, like it was a scar or a stocking seam.
***
Effie Perine stood before him in a maroon dress with long sleeves; the long, soft collar lay flat against her and heaved when her breath did. Spade watched it move. It was Wednesday, and he had given Brigid O’Shaughnessy over the police on Sunday night. He and the girl talked about first thing Monday. She hadn’t come into the inner office since, not without a message. Now was the only time.
Spade said nothing. He waited. His body looked heavy, stacked like blocks; the hard turn of his jaw and his squared-off chin and wide pink forehead made for more blocks. There was sweat on his forehead as the girl stood there.
“Well?” he demanded, when some time went by in silence. “Is it a resignation, angel?”
“No.” Her face shone too, but not her eyes. “I wanted to say … that I understand.”
“It’s a wonderful thing, understanding. Don’t look like that,” he added, though her expression hadn’t changed. His words came out rough. “You told me you didn’t pay attention to what I do. You oughtn’t to.”
She changed the angle of her shoulders. Her mouth looked soft and damp. She’d nibbled off some of her lipstick. “You said she killed Miles.”
“Yes, and you didn’t like him, and neither did I, so you don’t think it’s a good enough explanation. You see it from her point of view.”
“No, I don’t,” Effie Perine said, and Spade jerked back a little in his chair. It was like someone had pricked him in the belly with a knife. She didn’t go on to say how she did see it, and Spade didn’t ask her. The v of his mouth flattened out.
He said, “You came in here to clear the air and now we’re all breathing again. It’s noble of you.” He didn’t have the right voice for fine words, and they took on a mocking lilt. He began to roll another cigarette and put a great deal of concentration into it: all of his strength and focus went into his hands. There was a glaze over his eyes.
He didn’t look up again until after she’d gone back to the outer office, and then he tore the cigarette to pieces.
***
“Sam.”
Spade blinked one eye as he came awake. The other was swollen shut, the eyelashes of it matted together with dried blood. That side of his face had gotten out of proportion, the spare flesh on his bony features puffed and pulpy.
Only having one good eye worsened Spade’s aim as he reached out to pat her hand. He missed it at first, but then Effie Perine held onto the cuff of his shirt and he found her again.
“Sam, what happened?”
“A fight, sweetheart.”
“It doesn’t look like it could have been much of one,” she said tartly, running one nimble finger over the unbroken skin on his knuckles.
“I did some slapping to start it.” He turned his hand over, as if his palm would still be reddened from it. Effie Perine covered it with her own.
“And then you came back here, crawling in like a dog under the porch. Why didn’t you go home?”
Spade’s narrow lips pressed together and then parted. He didn’t answer her question.
“Let me fix you up,” she said.
She dabbed at his bloodied eye with a damp handkerchief, and her wrist, so close to his nose, carried a few notes of her perfume. It was from the bottle he’d bought her last Christmas. Spade turned his face towards it, but it was no good: the clean-up work kept changing the angle.
He said wearily, “You’d make a hell of a cutman.”
Through his parting eyelashes, he saw a twitch at the corner of her mouth. “Most people would say a nurse.”
“Or a nurse,” Spade said, obliging and desperate at the same time. “Or anything.”
It was Thursday morning, four day after he’d sent up a woman she’d liked. He hadn’t lost a fight so badly in his life. As punishment went, it had legs. He made some sound as she finished clearing off his eye—it was guttural and in the back of his throat, like a lunger’s gasp—and she said, “Sam? Did I hurt you?” her light voice sharp with alarm.
He said, “It’s not a mortal wound.”
He moved his head again, and now she held still and let him press his nose to her wrist. Her fingers moved over the disheveled hair at his temples, where the blond was pinkish from where it lay silkily close to the skin.
“What would be?” she said.
“If you had left, darling. If you’d left.”
“I thought—” The words shook, but her hand was steady as she stroked his bruised cheek. “I thought that if you could do to that to her, I didn’t even know you. Even if you were right. I thought you didn’t feel anything.”
“There’s a quick beneath the rind, but it’s no good for business.” Her hand passed over him, a steady caress moving to the side of his face that was still whole, and he pressed his mouth to her palm as it passed. His blood and sweat had marked her up, and she’d let them. “And I’m no good for a damn thing without you.”
She touched his mouth to either side of the split in his lip. “It’s fine now, Sam.”
She didn’t say this time that she understood, but she pulled up the other chair and sat close to him, her head resting on his shoulder. Spade’s hands opened and closed, and then he put his arm around her. She fit nicely in the crook of him. His breathing evened out.