Read Online Puzzle for Fiends by Patrick Quentin - Free Book Online Page A

than that, a sort of hunger and a simultaneous desire to resist. Because something in me, something very weak, was still trying to warn me.
    Steady , it said. You don't know who your friends are.
    I didn’t pay it much attention. All my thoughts were with Selena.
    “I’m crazy about you, baby,” I said, hardly realizing I had spoken the words out loud.
    “I know you are.” She gave a soft laugh in which there was a faint ring of triumph. “Of course you are, Gordy. You always were.”
    Abruptly she pulled herself away from me. She picked up the empty pack of cigarettes, said “damn” and, crossing to her tumbled dress, pulled a thin platinum case out of the deep side pocket. She came back to the bed, lit two cigarettes at once and handed me one.
    “Like in the movies,” she said. She puffed smoke, enjoying it. “Baby, I’ve got an idea. A wonderful idea. About your memory.”
    “To hell with my memory,” I said.
    “No, baby. Listen. Please. Your father’s poems. For years and years, ever since you started to drink and heaven knows how long that’s been—whenever you went on a toot, your father made you learn by heart and recite one of his poems against drink. I’ll make you learn one again. Don’t you see? Association and things. It’s bound to be frightfully, frightfully therapeutical.”
    “I don’t want to learn a poem against drink,” I said.
    “Darling, don’t be dreary. “She got up again, fumbled in a bureau drawer and brought out a drab grey volume with gilt lettering. Casually, as if it didn’t matter one way or the other, she pulled an oyster white negligée from a closet and slipped into it. She sat down on the green chaise longue.
    “All published privately. At terrific expense.” She leafed through the book. “Ah, here’s my favorite. The Ode to Aurora. It’s divine. Disinfected Swinburne. Baby, you’ve learned this one fifty times. It must be needlepointed on your heart.” She looked up laughing. “Darling, I’m much smarter than Nate. You see.”
    I was bored. I wanted her to come back to the bed.
    “Ready?” she said. “I’ll read the first verse. Then you learn it.”
    “Okay,” I said. “Give with the disinfected Swinburne.”
    In a voice croaky with mock evangelical fervor, she recited:
     
    “ ‘Seven sins led our sons to Perdition,
    Seven sins that lure youth like a whore.
    And the first of them all—(Prohibition
    Alas can repress it no more)—
    Is alcohol, weevil-like borer,
    Only one can combat its foul stealth.
    That’s sober and saintly Aurora,
    Clean Lady of Health.’ ”
     
    She looked up. “Isn’t it heaven, darling? He doesn’t mean the Greek Aurora, of course. She was a frightful cut-up, sleeping with shepherds on mountains and things. This is all written to the Aurora Clean Living League of St. Paul, Minnesota.” Her eyes clouded earnestly. “Don’t you remember any of it, baby?”
    “No,” I said. “Fortunately.”
    “Oh, baby.” She grimaced. “Really, you’re awfully tiresome. Never mind. Learn it. Maybe that’ll help.”
    She reread the first two lines. I repeated them. The rhythm made it easy to learn by heart. But it brought absolutely no recollection.
    “How did we ever recite it without laughing out loud?” I asked.
    “Laughing?” Selena looked horrified. “My dear, you wouldn’t ask that if you remembered your father. He was simply terrifying. You were more scared of him than any of us—except maybe Marny. That’s why you got drunk really. It was the only way you could feel brave. Want to try the next verse?”
    “No,” I said.
    She leaned forward coaxingly. “Gordy, baby, please—just one more.”
    “Okay.”
    “This is really my pet verse.”
    She started to read:
     
    “ ‘In the taverns where young people mingle
    To sway their lascivious hips,
    The youths with sin’s wages to jingle
    At the maidens with stains on their lips.
    Smoke rises like fumes from Baal’s