Light fell into the room from the hall, illuminating his gaunt praying mantis figure, his ragged bathrobe, his bright, frantic eyes. A mostly empty bottle stood beside the chair. She’d expected a scene like this, though not the gun, which she hadn’t known he owned. “It’s all right, Wallace,” she said. “Everything’s fixed now. What the men told you isn’t true. You don’t need to worry.”
“You don’t understand.” His voice cracked. “It’s too much. It’s impossible.” He pressed the muzzle of the pistol to his temple and began gasping for breath like a drowning man.
“Wallace,” Marian said. “Listen to me. Your debts are paid off. They’re gone. You don’t have to worry about them anymore. I’ve fixed it.”
He didn’t seem to hear. He’d stopped gasping, maybe stopped breathing altogether. His eyes were closed. His lips were moving soundlessly.
“Wallace,” she said. “Wallace. I’m paying them off. I’ve paid them off.”
He opened his eyes, seemed to focus on her.
“They’re gone,” she said. “Wiped clean.”
“All of them?”
“Yes, all of them. Everything.”
His arm slackened, fell into his lap. He didn’t seem to be paying attention to the weapon still in his hand. “How?”
“Someone helped me. Put that aside now.”
He set the gun on the table and curled sideways in the chair, a hand over his eyes. “Who?”
She moved closer, took the gun. “Barclay.”
He nodded. Tears caught in his beard. The thought came to her that if he had killed himself, she would have been free.
She didn’t know if he could think clearly enough to realize that Barclay had also been the one to call in his debts in the first place.
Barclay came looking for her later that night, found her in the cottage. She told him she couldn’t marry a man who would do such a thing. She couldn’t love such a man. She’d been about to come to him freely, but now she could not, could never feel anything for him. All she asked for was time to pay him back. She didn’t care if it took the rest of her life.
He had tried to embrace her, had begged, claimed madness, blamed her for the madness. When she would not yield, he’d finally said, coldly, “What you don’t understand is that I’ve bought your uncle and he isn’t for sale. Not to you or anyone. It’s done.”
In the Plaza dining room, Barclay said, “I wouldn’t have thought a nightclub would be your idea of a good time, the way you talk about wanting to see empty, unspoiled places.”
“I don’t know what all I like,” she said. “I’ve never been anywhere.”
In the morning, they took a taxi to the house where she’d been born, in a neighborhood that seemed quiet, a little grimy. The house’s flat brick face triggered no emotion in her, certainly no epiphany. A gaunt man in a cap and overcoat was sitting on the stoop next door. When Marian called to him, he hurried over, cap in hand, filling the window with his thin face and eager eyes. “Do you know who lives in this house?” she asked.
“It’s a boardinghouse, ma’am. Nice enough if you can afford it. Not for me. I can’t even afford lunch, can I?”
Marian started to apologize, but Barclay was already reaching across, thrusting a coin at the man. “Let’s go,” he said to the driver. Marian looked out the back window at the receding brick house, the tall figure flipping the coin in one hand.
* * *
—
Since the ship hadn’t been at capacity to begin with and most people chose （or were obligated） to lie low through the storm, Marian found herself in splendid isolation. In the mornings, she might drink coffee under the amber glass skylights of one lounge, and later she might read a book amid the Chinoiserie latticework of another. When a waiter offered her champagne—“Complimentary, madam”—she accepted, and then she ordered another glass and perhaps a third, counting on Barclay to be too wretched to notice her flouting of his ban on drinking. The ship pressed up from below, dropped abruptly away. Crashing sounds came at random intervals, and at times the long steel body corkscrewed or juddered violently as though passing over a washboard road. In the nights, Barclay groaned and cursed while Marian dropped effortlessly into oblivion. In the mornings, Barclay made it clear he regarded her peaceful slumber as selfish and disloyal.
“Better stay here and get some more rest, then,” she said, and went off to her coffee, her book.