Chapter 8 Arlene

Chapter8 Arlene

Pinko slut.

That nasty old refrain was yammering in Arlene Hupp’s head, but after today she wondered if she might be able to put it to bed. If she might finally, finally be able to quiet those words for good.

The men were still passing the manila folder back and forth, arguing what to do—typical, Arlene thought, just typical . She had no idea what Skunk Works was, or Lockheed Martin , or any of that stuff about fast-strike aircraft, but surely it was obvious what to do! She was about to tell them so when Bea cut through everything with one of her quintessential Bea-stings. “What if we don’t turn Grace in to the police?”

Everyone stared. Bea stood there, fingers still drumming on the handle of her bloodied bat, other hand raking through that short black hair Arlene hated, so unfeminine . If that was what Harland swooned for, Arlene was well shut of him. Maybe he was a pansy. “Look,” Bea started, sounding dogged. “Maybe Grace started out, um, as a spy—” Stuttering over that a little bit; they were all still in shock. “But I believe her, that she quit that game in the first inning. She didn’t turn that folder in; there would have been consequences—things would look different for us right now if she had. And the man upstairs, her partner, he came to kill her. He wouldn’t have done that if she was still spying, still following orders.”

Don’t you dare do this , Arlene thought, glaring at Bea. Don’t you ruin this for me. This chance: fame, fortune, and a nasty memory put to bed, all tied up with a bow. A red bow, in the form of Grace March, sitting bloodstained and quiet in their midst. “We have no idea why her partner came here to kill her,” Arlene said to Bea, acidly. “He was a crazy Commie. Who knows why they do anything?”

“But her people invested in her. How much does it cost, developing someone like her, so she can pass here without anyone suspecting?” (“Quite a lot,” Grace murmured from her stool.) “You don’t just kill off someone like that for no reason, it’s a waste of training and money. Even Reds aren’t that crazy.” Bea looked like she was grappling with the whole idea in whatever terms came to hand. “Like... like a young pitcher. You don’t throw ’em a signing bonus and send ’em off to the minors and put years into developing their fastball—”

“Oh, quit with the baseball metaphors ,” Claire snarled, pacing.

“—and then get rid of them as soon as they join the Red Sox and start striking out star hitters right and left. You’ve got an asset, you protect it. The only way you throw the asset out is if it’s not wearing your colors anymore.” Bea took a breath, leaning her bat up against the wall at last and straightening on her bad knee. “She says she quit that work to live in peace. I think—”

“I think she was a pinko slut keeping her cover up with us while she did who-knows-what behind our backs,” Arlene snapped. How good it felt to spit that particular epithet out at someone else, for once. “She could have been infiltrating the White House or HUAC—”

“I don’t think so,” Bea said. “She’s always here. She wasn’t sneaking out and disappearing for days. She was always at the library shelving books, or painting a sign over at the beauty parlor, or right here in Briarwood House giving dinners and being friendly to everybody.”

Not everybody , thought Arlene.

“All right, maybe it’s possible she was off spying every night she wasn’t hosting dinners,” Bea finished. “But we’ve known her four years now, and I don’t believe it. I just don’t. She may have started out Galina Whoever, but she left that behind to become Grace March.” Bea’s voice dropped. “And I don’t know about you, but I don’t want to see our Grace in the electric chair.”

Grace looked up from where she sat on her footstool, hands cupping her own elbows, hunched over as if to shield herself from incoming blows. “Thanks, Slugger,” she said briefly, then fell silent again as all their eyes turned to her. Realizing, maybe, just how much the sound of her voice was newly unsettling to them all: those soft Iowa accents, when upstairs they had heard her snarling and spitting in Russian.

Grace March. Their Grace March, a Red spy.

“I knew there was something off about you,” Arlene couldn’t help saying. “I knew from the very first!”

Grace gave her an exasperated look. “No, you didn’t. I’m good at this. And if you did know, why did you sit on it for four years?”

Arlene felt the flush climb up from her lace collar. She hadn’t known, had she? She’d looked at Grace March the day she moved in and felt like an eager puppy: Please like me! Please like me! A woman with style and manners, a woman who wasn’t mannish or eccentric or bitchy like so many of the others in Briarwood House. A woman who had been married, who could tell Arlene how she’d done it, take her under her wing. Arlene cringed , remembering how she’d sucked up to this woman. Coming around those Briar Club dinners like a dog who refused to stay on the other side of a shut door, even when the others made it clear they hated her. Grace hadn’t been a friend to Arlene, but she hadn’t entirely shut that door, so Arlene kept coming back wagging her tail. Please like me! Or at least, tell me why nobody else does?

Because she didn’t know. She didn’t know why nobody ever liked her, when (ever since what she thought of as The Incident) she dressed how the magazines agreed a girl should dress, and had the kind of job people agreed a girl could have before she married, and said the kinds of things everybody agreed a girl should think.

Arlene pushed that away, though, because there was a bigger problem here: they had a Commie spy in the room, caught literally red-handed, and Bea had just suggested letting her go, and people weren’t shouting her down.

“She’s done more than be our friend.” Fliss spoke up unexpectedly before Arlene could, still holding a reddening compress of bandages against her slashed neck. “She saved my life tonight. That man would have cut my throat, and she charged in to protect me. She protected all of us. She could have run out the front and left us all behind, but she didn’t. She fought.” Looking around the circle. “She fought for us, and if not for Bea’s cracking home run swing she’d have died . So I don’t want to turn her in, either. Because of her my daughter still has a mother.”

Fliss’s husband made a sudden convulsive movement, pulling his wife toward him as if he needed the warmth of her pressed against him right now . Dr.Dan wasn’t that handsome, Arlene thought, even if he was a doctor—but that instinctive, protective movement made her want to spit and scratch. Jealousy, not a good look on a girl, but she’d never been able to shake it off when she saw someone like Fliss. Why did some girls get everything and some got nothing?

Focus, Arlene , she told herself. She was going to be the HUAC secretary who helped uncover a Commie spy; she was going to have her picture in LIFE and suitors lined up out the door. None of whom would ever call her— “Some of you should try thinking like loyal Americans here,” Arlene said to cut off her own thought, folding her arms. “It’s espionage she is guilty of. Does that mean nothing?”

“I’d have committed espionage to get out of the hellhole I escaped from.” Reka’s creaky old voice with its paprika dusting of eastern Europe around the vowels, her paint-stained hands a gnarled knot in her lap. “I’d have done it in a heartbeat if it got me a ticket here. I didn’t have to, but I’d have done it.” Reka looked at Grace. “I don’t want her arrested, either.”

“If she’d wanted out of her own country, she could have applied to come here legally—” someone else began.

“ How? ” The word broke from Grace and Reka simultaneously. Reka was the one who continued, “How could she have come here legally? The USSR wouldn’t have let her go. Even if they had, would this country have taken her? I had trouble getting accepted here legally, and I had a sponsor in the Senate and was fleeing Hitler .”

Arlene planted hands on hips. “So you’ll let a traitor go just because you happen to like her?”

“Frankly, yes. I’m a selfish old bag that way.”

“This is much bigger than just us.” Nora spoke up, still rocking Angela, who had fallen into an exhausted sleep against her collarbone. “Has anyone considered the national side of things? Jesus Christ on a crutch, this country’s only now getting free of McCarthy—the trials, the accusations, the denunciations. If it splashes into the papers that a Soviet agent was uncovered in Washington, D.C., this country will erupt . We will never, ever be free of Tail Gunner Joe then. Or his lists or his loyalty review boards or his investigations—”

“But he was right .” Arlene felt her voice scale up. “He was right, there are Communists hiding in plain sight!”

“It’s not illegal for Grace to have been a Communist.” Unexpectedly, that was Claire. That stupid cow, standing there with jaw set. “No matter what idiocy McCarthy’s hammering us with, it isn’t illegal. It’s one of the basic principles of Americanism: the right to hold unpopular beliefs—”

“You’re quoting Margaret Chase Smith again,” murmured the elegant Mrs.Sutherland at her side (and what was she doing here, anyway?).

“Yes, well, old Maggie’s kind of gotten into my head. And if she were here, she’d say no one should be strapped to Old Sparky just for a belief. She’d say it was un-American, and she would be right.”

Nora nodded. “Every day I go to work and I walk past the Constitution in its case. The Bill of Rights. The things we stand for—”

“Holding criminals accountable is what we stand for,” Arlene shouted.

“—and maybe she committed a crime here by spying, but turning her in will likely mean punishment out of proportion to the crime. Because of this environment we live in.”

“We let the courts decide—”

“I don’t know if I can do that,” Nora said stubbornly. “If it’s between taking the choice away from the courts by not turning Grace in, or turning her in and ignoring the fact that this decision will likely get her killed and set off another firestorm against innocents in this country—well, both choices cross boundaries of the law. But I know which is more likely to get someone hurt. Probably many people hurt.”

Arlene rounded on Harland. “Tell me you’re not listening to this.” The rat had never put a ring on her finger but he’d worked for Hoover. He couldn’t be—

But he stood with that manila folder in his hands, looking desperately troubled.

“Before we get too lost in the lofty ethical side of things, remember we have a corpse upstairs.” Xavier Byrne spoke up, the one they said was some kind of gangster. He stood with his hands in his pockets, looking around the circle coolly, and Arlene remembered with a claw of envy that dime-size diamond he’d put on Nora’s hand once, before the idiot gave it back. “Call the police or don’t call the police, how are you going to handle the damn body? And don’t ask me to do it,” he added, sounding dry. “I’m out of that business for good.”

Nora looked at him sharply, but said nothing.

“Could we say it’s a robber, and we acted in self-defense?” Fliss asked, sounding tentative. “If he’s a Soviet mole, there’s no family or friends to contradict anything we said about him... right?”

Arlene had the familiar feeling like hot wires of rage were burrowing through the back of her eyes into her brain. Only this time it wasn’t because of a question like How does a mouse like Nora Walsh get a five-carat diamond out of a man in two months flat when I can’t get Harland to propose after two years? It was because they couldn’t see what was right in front of them, these snippy cows who thought they were so much better than she was. Too good to be friends with Arlene Hupp, but not too good to be friends with a pinko slut.

“Something else to consider,” Xavier added. “How does it look for all of you, living with a Red spy for four years? Think about how the police will view it. Nora’s not wrong, that the headlines will start McCarthy and his accusation wheel up all over again. Jobs will be lost. Security clearances.” Looking at Harland. “Think about that.”

“The police wouldn’t—” Arlene began.

“Yes, they would.” Xavier cut Arlene off. “I did a year inside Lorton and I’m not so keen to hand the boys in blue an excuse to send me back. So if we’re taking votes here—”

“We aren’t voting !” Arlene cried. “You’re some kind of criminal, why are you even—”

“Shut it.” He looked at her, eyes hard, until her mouth snapped shut. Then he looked around at the others. “I vote we keep the police in the dark.”

“The criminal’s in favor of the illegal option, that’s novel,” Harland snapped. They began arguing, and Pete got up suddenly and went to the kitchen where they heard him clattering around, talking briefly with his father and Lina. He came back with a lowball glass of bourbon and handed it to Grace.

“What are you doing?” Arlene demanded. “We all know you have a stupid crush, Pete, but that doesn’t mean waiting hand and foot on the Commie spy—”

“She’s tired and hurting and she’s under my roof.” Pete folded his arms. “I’m not having anyone go without a drink and a little common decency under my roof.”

“Pete—” Harland began.

“No.” Pete’s Adam’s apple bobbed as he swallowed, but he sounded very firm. “Until Mom’s back, I’m the Nilsson who’s in charge of this house, and I’m not having Mrs.Grace mistreated. And I vote we don’t turn her in, either,” he added, belligerently. “I vote we report an attempted robbery, get that lunatic’s corpse off the floor upstairs, and forget this entire night ever happened. Because— Because you’re all family, and that includes her, and it still does.”

They’re going to let her go , Arlene thought. The feeling of the white-hot wire worming through her brain got even stronger. They’re going to go soft and let her go . A Soviet spy! Grace March, Galina whatever-her-Russki-name-was, would waltz free and with her all those half-formed things Arlene had only just started to imagine: the promotion from her boss at HUAC (maybe he’d finally stop asking her out to dinner, him a married man, and just give her the raise she’d earned a year ago); the handshakes and congratulations from President Eisenhower himself ( You are a very brave young lady, MissHupp! ); the line of eligible men asking her out to dinner ( Let me introduce you to my mother, she’s dying to meet the heroine of the hour! ). A leg up from this frustrating life that had become a quagmire when it was supposed to be an escape. She’d thought she’d gotten away from it all when she took the bus out of Lampasas—away from the turkey ranch, away from the lack of friends, away from The Incident, headed for the bright lights of the nation’s capital—but she’d just landed smack in the middle of another life she couldn’t stand. A rented room and a dead-end job working for a married man with wandering hands, and still no friends.

Pinko slut. Pinko slut.

“Excuse me,” Arlene muttered, shoving out of the parlor, but no one was paying attention to her anyway. They were all still talking it through, talking it over, persuading themselves to offer the hand of mercy to the blood-drenched Red in their center, and Grace was quietly listening to them decide her fate. No one watched as Arlene stamped into the dining room decorated up with the good china and the boughs of autumn leaves, snatched a folded napkin off the table with a scatter of silverware, crammed the starched cloth into her mouth clear back to the molars, and screamed into it.

His name had been Les—Lester Gibbons, paratrooper, Eighty-Second Airborne Division from Fort Bragg. Arlene had been feeding the turkeys (how she hated that chore, the way they clawed and squawked) when she saw the parachutes start to bloom in the blue Texas sky. How everyone gawped! She’d known there was some war game planned, but hearing her parents drone on at the dinner table about paperwork signed from Fort Bragg for use of ranch lands in maneuvers was one thing. Seeing tanks and trucks roll through town flying the mock flag of the People’s Republic of the Glorious Aggressor Nation, that was something else.

Some of her neighbors were frightened, Arlene remembered that. When the president of the school board got mock arrested in front of the courthouse the next day and it was announced that schools and churches would be closed until all teachers and clergy were vetted, some of the kids cried. But Arlene, clutching her high school book bag while an officer in a People’s Republic armband intoned something about bursting the bonds by which the filthy capitalistic Wall Street warmongers have enslaved the people of Texas , had looked at those buzz-cut young paratroopers, most of them struggling to keep a straight face in the ridiculousness of it all, and just thought, Finally! Some men around who weren’t sunburned ranch hands or pimply boys she’d known since junior high. She’d twinkled her fingertips (newly varnished in Cutex Old Rose) at the nearest one, and he came bounding up to her later on.

“Hi,” he said in a fake Russian accent, grinning. “I’m Ivan. Who are you, American girl?”

“You’re not supposed to be Russian.” Arlene laughed.

“Well, no. We’re supposed to be a totalitarian state called Aggressor, risen from Central Europe to attack the United States,” he recited. “By now we supposedly already control Florida and New England and have started our assault on Texas by dropping an atomic bomb on Corpus Christi—don’t laugh,” he reproached. “This is serious stuff.”

“We need to be prepared for a potential Communist invasion,” Arlene agreed, thinking it was amazing the stupid things army men could get up to and get paid for and still manage to look solemn about.

“So we’re not supposed to be Soviets, but we’re sort-of-Soviets for the next few weeks,” Call Me Ivan said. “I’m Les, Les Gibbons from Santa Barbara—” And that was it, Arlene was dreaming of California beaches and orange groves, a little house on an army base big enough for a paratrooper and his wife and babies. All she had to do was lasso the paratrooper; and Arlene was a ranch girl—she knew her way around a lasso. And Les fell right into her arms, the two of them sneaking around after curfew giggling about whether this counted as fraternization or not. “‘Make the invaders feel unwanted,’” Arlene said, reading aloud from a propaganda sheet passed around by a simulated Lampasas resistance movement. “‘They have been taught that you will welcome them. Ignoring them will help to lower their morale—’”

“Here’s something else you can help lower,” Les murmured, putting her hand on the front of his trousers, and Arlene had really thought she was on her way to a quarter-carat diamond and a meet-my-fiancée telephone call to his parents in Santa Barbara. Until The Incident, the day she came around the back of the bar where Les and some friends liked to hang out off duty and heard them talking outside, cigarettes dangling from their lips. One of Les’s friends, asking about the girl from the turkey ranch—Darlene? Slowing her footsteps, holding the blueberry pie she’d made fresh that afternoon, smiling to hear what he’d say about her.

“She’s okay,” Les had said, not correcting them about her name. “Bit of a pinko slut. You can tell she’d roll over for a real Ivan if they came parachuting in, she’s that desperate.”

They were all still laughing when Arlene stormed around the corner and smashed her pie over Les’s head.

Really, it all happened for the best , Arlene thought now. She’d packed her suitcase the moment high school was done (long after the soldiers of the fake People’s Republic were routed out of town by the countering forces from Fort Hood) and headed for Washington, D.C., where she knew she could do much better than a stupid paratrooper barely out of basic training. And she’d learned something from the entire experience: men could be horrible, but think how much worse it would have been if it had been real Soviet men, real enemies. Les and his friends, angry and covered in blueberries, hadn’t been so bad. They’d only pushed her around a bit between them (so she couldn’t claw them with her nails); rubbed a handful of pie in her face (like little boys with sand at a beach); called her names ( pinko slut, pinko slut). And maybe “pinko” was a bit harsh—Arlene was no Commie sympathizer—but she had acted like a slut. She’d brought it on herself: getting pushed around behind a bar, getting a button on her blouse popped. She’d pulled loose and run home sobbing, blueberries in her hair, but you couldn’t say she hadn’t learned . Men weren’t to be trusted, but once you knew that, you had only yourself to blame if things went wrong.

Do you know any Communist sympathizers, MissHupp? the interviewer had asked when Arlene applied for the typing pool with HUAC, clearly already appreciating her neat ponytail and tidily crossed ankles. We cannot employ anyone here—even the lowliest typist—who has questionable loyalties.

I don’t associate with such people , Arlene had promptly said. Only a pinko would do that. And she didn’t miss the approving glance that earned her. Or the promotion she earned for reporting on the typist who said her sister got blacklisted from teaching second grade in Massachusetts because of Socialist sympathies. She’d learned her lesson: no fraternization. Make the invaders feel unwanted. Don’t be a pinko slut.

Well, Briarwood House had an invader in their midst, and maybe no one else knew what to do, but Arlene Hupp understood her duty.

“Oh, are y’all still arguing?” she asked sweetly, coming back into the parlor. Grace was still sitting on her stool, hands folded around her glass of bourbon, but someone (probably the lovestruck Pete) had draped a blanket around her shoulders. The rest of the Briar Club was still clustered in a standing circle like they were at Bible study, apparently debating what they were going to do about the body upstairs. “Have you had your little vote now?” Arlene said when they finally turned to look at her. “Well, let me tell you it doesn’t matter. I’ve just called the police.”

For a moment she savored it, the astonished looks on their faces. That’ll teach you to ignore me , Arlene thought, pulling her chin high. I don’t need friends to do what’s right.

“What did you tell them?” Bea rapped out. “What did you say?”

“I just said they should send an officer around right away.” Because if she’d started off with I’ve caught a Soviet spy they’d assume she was crazy or drunk. “I said we had a terrible situation at Briarwood House, and they said an officer would be over as soon as—”

Reka came across the parlor, surprisingly fast for those old legs of hers, and backhanded Arlene across the face so hard she lost her balance and went down hard on Mrs.Nilsson’s bilious rug. She sat there ears ringing, a hand to her stinging cheek, almost too shocked for words. Reka would have come at her again, but Pete pulled her back, and then no one was even looking at Arlene anymore. They were all looking at Grace.

Grace shook off the shawl, setting down her glass with hands that trembled just a little. “I’d better run,” she said, matter-of-fact. “I have cash—enough for some hair dye and some new identification if I can get clear of Washington.”

You won’t get clear of Washington , Arlene wanted to shout. You won’t be safe anywhere. Your face will be on every front page in the country within twenty-four hours. But the Briar Club was pulling around her quietly, all speaking at once. The whole parlor seemed to be curling protectively around her.

“—don’t have to run,” Joe was saying. “We’ll just report the robbery and the body, keep the rest out of it—”

“—we’ll all say Arlene’s lying,” Pete added. “Who do you think they’re going to believe, when the rest of us—”

“I can’t believe you all,” Arlene said loudly, but no one paid attention. Bea was picking up Grace’s shawl; Fliss was soothing Angela, who had begun crying again—Grace reached out to touch the little girl’s hair as she was carried into the kitchen, and Fliss didn’t flinch away from her. Even those who looked uncomfortable (Harland, Dr.Dan) were still letting this happen . “I can’t believe any of you,” Arlene repeated. “You traitors .”

Grace tried to press them back. “I can’t stay,” she said briefly, looking around the circle. “Nothing is going to stop Arlene from telling, and once she does—”

“That’s right.” Arlene realized she was still sitting on the floor—even Harland, with his Virginia-gentleman manners, hadn’t stepped over to offer her a hand up. Her cheek burned from Reka’s slap as she scrambled upright. “I’ll tell, and if you don’t back me up I’ll report all of you as well.” That police officer can’t get here soon enough , Arlene thought, looking at their contempt-filled faces. “Why can’t you be on my side?” she cried, looking between them again. “Why can’t you do the right thing? I’m only doing the right thing , why do you all hate me?” Already her moment of triumph was slipping away like a dust devil dissolving in a hot Texas wind, and why did that always happen? Why did everything always turn to hot dust in her hands?

Pinko slut. She felt the white-hot wire begin squirming back through her brain, felt the choking thickness rise in her throat—and then the doorbell rang.

Everyone froze. “It can’t be the police,” Joe said. “It’s too fast—” But Arlene darted across the room, slipping between Bea and Nora.

“Don’t you dare ,” Bea yelled, grabbing at her arm, but Arlene evaded the tug and ran down the hall, heart thumping. Reinforcements, at last. Support. The police, at least, would know she had done the right thing. They would laud her for it.

“Thank god—” Arlene began, flinging the door open. But the man swaying on the doorstep wasn’t wearing police blue, and he was quite definitely drunk. “Are you a detective?” Arlene ventured, looking at his fine but crumpled three-piece suit.

“I’m Barrett,” he said, slurring so much she missed his last name completely. The rest was clear enough, though. “That bitch of mine, she’s here.” Bishoffmine, sheshere. “She took a taxi here, housekeeper heard the address.” Taxshi, houshkeeper, addresh. “Where you hiding her?”

“Who?” Arlene’s skin crawled. “What bitch?”

“I know sheshere—”

“Excuse me.” Harland’s authoritative voice sounded behind Arlene. “There’s been a misunderstanding. We’re in no need of—”

Barrett whatever-his-name-was jostled over the threshold, pushing Arlene to one side. “You the one she’s fucking?”

Harland blinked. “What?”

“What?” Arlene echoed, adding, “ Who? ”

“She’s fucking someone,” the drunk man muttered, tottering forward. The bourbon fumes nearly made Arlene gag. “Know she is...”

“Who are you?” Arlene seized his arm, trying to keep this night from careening off the rails. “You can’t be with the police, are you—”

He hit her in the throat with a fast, easy chop of his hand, like it was a blow he’d dealt out many times and in just the right place. “Slut,” he said, rather casually, and that was a word he didn’t slur on, as if he said it quite a lot. Arlene found herself sliding against the paneled wall toward the floor, throat burning, as the man lurched at Harland.

“Look here—” Harland began, moving forward, and then a fist glanced off his sharp cheekbone, Arlene saw through blurring eyes. It wasn’t hard enough to drop him, but he stumbled and hit the side table, its spindly legs tangling with his, and crashed down. The drunk man kneed him in the head as he stumbled on toward the parlor, and Harland, who had started to rise, went down all over again.

Arlene cried out, but the man named Barrett ignored her. “Know you’re in there,” he slurred in a singsong voice as he crashed toward the parlor. “Know you’re in there, you whooooooooore —” Only his name wasn’t Barrett, Arlene knew. Because he was looking for Grace , wasn’t he? Of course he was. Who knew how many others she’d been sent over with from Moscow? One was dead upstairs, and here was another. It was all about Grace the spy, Grace who had started out Galina, so who knew what name Barrett had started under? Probably Boris .

“No,” Arlene said thickly, managing to drag herself upright. “You get out of here—this is an American house, you Commie bastard—”

But he’d already disappeared into the parlor, and a beat later there was a roar. “You fucking bitch —” and a woman’s terrified cry. Arlene was still having trouble breathing, her throat on fire from where he’d hit her, but she stumbled after him, tripping over Harland, who was dazedly trying to get to his feet. “Stay in there,” Arlene gasped at Fliss, who had flown to the door of the kitchen with Angela in her arms, Lina and Mr.Nilsson right behind her—later they’d applaud Arlene for that, her prescience at making sure the children were kept back from the violence. She stumbled onward, bursting through the door, nearly falling again over Bea’s bat.

And yes, she’d been right, the drunk was trying to get at Grace. Everyone in the room had fallen back—Pete pulling Nora behind him, a limping Bea stepping in front of Reka—but the new arrival ignored all of them, looking toward the mantel at Grace. Grace, who had Claire behind her holding the shaking Mrs.Sutherland in protective arms. Grace, saying in her soothing voice, “Calm down, it’s all right—”

Pinko slut. Arlene’s head was throbbing. Her throat screamed.

“You bitch,” the Russian kept saying, “you goddamn ungrateful whore,” and his English was every bit as perfect as Grace’s but the wool was off Arlene’s eyes now. Spies all around us, Commies all around us. Under every rock. McCarthy was right.

“You shut the hell up and sit down.” Xavier Byrne came from behind and grabbed the man in an armlock, addressing him with remarkable calm. “You’re not putting hands on anyone in this room. Sit down —”

The man wasn’t going anywhere, but he wouldn’t sit, either, snarling, trying to get at Grace where she stood in front of Claire and Mrs. Sutherland. Arlene didn’t hesitate. Another threat, another invader, and the Briar Club would probably vote to let this one go too.

Well, not on her watch.

“I know what you are,” she shouted, snatching Bea’s bat off the floor. The Russian managed to wrench an arm loose from the grip around his elbow, swinging toward her. For an instant his face—furious, handsome, deceptively all-American—looked like the face of Les Gibbons in Lampasas.

Pinko slut. And the white-hot wire burrowing through Arlene’s temple gave one final flash and exploded inside her skull.

“ Go back to MOSCOW ,” she screamed and swung the bat.

Once again they were all staring at her, their faces white, open-mouthed. That’s right , Arlene thought, ignoring the slumped shape at her feet, feeling something warm slide down the side of her face. The bat was covered in blood. Look at me: the heroine of the hour. President Eisenhower would be pinning a medal on her in the White House rose garden: the HUAC secretary who took down a Red spy.

She realized she must have said it aloud, because Grace gave her a strange look, stepping forward slowly as though approaching a wild animal. “Arlene,” she said, reaching forward and uncurling Arlene’s fingers from around the bloodied bat, “that’s... not a Red spy.”

Arlene put her chin up. She knew what she knew.

“No.” The elegant Mrs.Sutherland stepped forward from behind Grace, not so elegant anymore, her raspberry linen dress crumpled, her hair hanging in her wild eyes. Those eyes fixed on the corpse crumpled at their feet, skull smashed into the carpet. “Th-Th-That’s—”

She was shaking so hard she couldn’t get out another word. Suddenly she flowed down to her knees, shivering, leaning into Claire, who caught her before she could fall all the way, and Arlene stared from face to face. “Why are you all looking like that?”

“Um,” said Pete. “You know who Senator Sutherland is, right?”

“What does that have to—”

“That’s his son.” Pete swallowed, looking at Sydney. “Her husband.”

“What?” Arlene blinked. “What?”

Nora looked like she wanted to throw up, but she stepped forward. “So we have two bodies in this house—”

“One a Soviet agent,” said Reka, “and one a senator’s son—”

“—and the police are on the way,” Bea finished.

They looked around at one another, and that was when Arlene lost time. When it all slipped away from her in a babble of voices. When she came back to herself she was sitting on a straight-backed chair in the kitchen, the children now whisked away, the smell of burned turkey in her nose. Alone, of course. Why am I always alone? she thought dully. No matter what I do, no matter how hard I try, I’m always alone.

But a warm arm slipped around her shoulders in that moment, and Arlene looked up through swimming eyes and saw Grace’s golden-brown gaze. She was wearing a different dress from the bloodstained red taffeta, an old floral print that didn’t have a single drop of gore on it, and her hair and face were sponged clean. “Arlene,” she said, and there was a flurry of activity all around them (someone hissing Are the clothes disposed of? ; someone else hissing The police, I think they’re here— ), but Arlene couldn’t tear her attention away from those calm golden-brown eyes. “Arlene,” said Grace, “listen to me and do everything I say, and neither of us is going to jail.”