"What"s the matter?" she asked. "Don"t tell me I"m slipping?"
I drew back a little. "What"d you have to see me about?"
"Now I"ve heard everything."
The anger came boiling up in me again. Maybe she thought she owned me. "Well, if that"s all," I said, "let"s get on with it. If we hurry, maybe we can make the next train home."
Her palm exploded against my face and made my eyes sting. I grabbed her arm and tightened up on it. "Keep your hand to yourself, you little witch," I said, "or I"ll break it off."
"Well, so we"ve got another girl now, have we?"
"And whose business would that be if I had?"
"It might be mine. You ever think of that?"
"It"s not. And I didn"t."
"You might be surprised." She looked up at me with a tantalizing smile. "Now, let"s see. It wouldn"t be that leggy blonde in the loan office, would it? What"s her name? Harper? I saw you at the movies with her. But no, I guess she"s not quite your type. Pretty, all right, but a little young and watered-down for you."
"Knock it off," I said. "If you wanted to see me about something, start talking."
"So it is the little dear?" She laughed. "Well, how do you like that? She must be the sly one, all right, with that innocent look. But I guess you can never tell about that long-underwear type.
I caught myself just in time. I couldn"t let her needle me into losing my head. There was something a little too c.o.c.ky about her which got home to me, even through the blaze of anger, and I had to find out what she was up to.
"Let"s get down to cases," I said. "I came out here to tell you something. Don"t call me up any more. I don"t like it. And this is the last time I"m going to meet you out here. You may be crazy, but I"m not. If you"ve got to play in the sawdust to keep yourself from jumping at night, go find yourself another boy friend. I"m through."
"My goodness," she said. "You are in a state tonight, aren"t you? What"s she been doing to you, taking you to church? Or maybe you"re still a little nervous?"
"What do you mean by that?"
"It must have been just awful. Imagine them thinking you did it."
I could feel it coming, but went on playing it deadpan. "Well, I guess they had to pick up somebody. But what"s that got to do with it?"
"Well, nothing, I suppose," she said innocently. "Except that-Well, I suppose I thought you"d be glad to see me. After all, I did see you there, and I was the only one, wasn"t I?"
"Probably others did, and just didn"t remember," I said, beginning to sweat. "The fact that you saw me proves I was there, so there must have been more."
"But it was so stupid of them not to remember, wasn"t it?"
"Well, maybe they just didn"t know me."
"At least, not as well as I do."
"I can"t see that it matters now, anyway," I said. "After all, somebody saw me there, and that settles it. But don"t think I"m not glad you did. It was a break for me."
"Oh, it was for me too," she said earnestly. "Just for the sweet things you said. Remember?"
"Oh, sure," I said.
"I knew you would. It was right at the beginning. I was watching the fire-engine hook on to the water line, and you came over to where I was standing and said you"d never seen me looking prettier and that you wished we were alone. You remember that, don"t you?"
The dirty, rotten little... "Yes," I said. "And what else did I say?"
"Why, let me see now. You said it was funny it was that building, because we"d just been in it the other day, and who"d have thought all those old papers and trash and junk would catch fire like that? Of course, n.o.body else knew that-"
"I see," I said. "It was quite a conversation, wasn"t it. Was that all?"
"Well, not quite. You said n.o.body could ever take my place, and you"d never be able to leave me. I thought that was awful sweet. Don"t you?"
"Yes," I said. "Very sweet. So now let"s cut it out. What"s the angle?"
"Why, nothing at all, sweet. Except that I"d hate to think you didn"t mean all those nice things you said to me."
"And if I told you to go to h.e.l.l?"
"Then I"d know I just dreamed the whole thing. Wouldn"t that be awful?"
She knew she didn"t have to say the rest of it. Without her alibi I"d be headed right back to the quiz show and maybe this time they"d break me. She had me right where she wanted me.
"I love talking to you," she said, smiling. "We understand each other so well. You know, in a lot of ways we"re just alike."
"Isn"t that nice?" I said.
"Yes, I think so. Now kiss me like a good boy, and tell me you like me better than that skinny little owl."
There was no way to kiss her like a good boy. You could start out that way, but you always ended up on the other side of the tracks. If you hated her, it didn"t make any difference; it worked just the same.
"M-m-m!" she said. "See? You do like me, don"t you?"
"No."
"Isn"t that funny? I could have sworn you did. But, honey, before you get carried away with not liking me, I just remembered there was something I wanted to tell you."
"What"s that?"
"This will kill you. I think I got caught one of those other times."
She had me in such a cross-fire by now I couldn"t even think. I just looked at her stupidly. "You got what?"
"Caught. You know. As in caught. I think I"m pregnant."
"Well, why tell me? After all, you"re married."
"I just thought you might be interested."
"What are you going to do?"
"Look," she said. "I"ll show you."
At first I thought she had gone crazy, and then I was sure of it. She was just staring down into the ravine. The place we were standing was a little to one side of the sawdust pile, on the brink of the ravine itself. The sawdust was stacked up maybe as high as a two-storey house, and as the pile had grown and spread while the mill was operating, it had edged further out all the time until the back edge of it spilled over the bank. It was very steep and probably fifty or seventy-five feet to the bottom. You couldn"t be sure, however. It was very dark down there in the trees and you couldn"t see the bottom.
But it was what she did next that got me. She just jumped, without any warning at all, right out on to the steep slope of the sawdust. An avalanche of the stuff carried away and went down with her as she rolled and slid out of sight into the dense shadow below me. I stared down, completely speechless with amazement.
She"s a psycho, I thought. She"s completely off her trolley. One minute she"s a blackmailer as cagey as Kruschev, and the next she wants to gambol half-naked on a pile of sawdust like a babe on an absinthe jag. It made me cold to think about it. This was the overs.e.xed and rudderless maniac who could throw me back to the cops any time.
I looked down and I could see the white gleam of her in the edge of the shadows, She was trying to come back up, and she was doing it the hard way. Instead of going down the ravine to a place she could walk out, she was trying to climb right up that steep incline of loose sawdust. She was sinking in it halfway up her thighs, like a man walking in deep snow, and every few feet she"d start a new avalanche and lose the little she"d gained. It was man-killing work. She fought it with a fury I didn"t know she had in her. Every time she"d slide back she"d tear into it again, lifting her legs high and battling it. It would have killed anyone with a bad heart. I watched her fight her way up the last few feet and then collapse exhausted on the edge of the slope. The labored sound of her breathing seemed to fill the night.
"Well!" She stopped and took a long, shaky breath. "How was that?"
"All right, I guess, if you enjoyed it."
"Enjoyed it? Are you silly!"
"Well, what"d you do it for?"
"Don"t be stupid, darling. I just told you."
Suddenly the light burst on me. She hadn"t blown her top at all. The whole thing had been quite sane and deadly.
"You mean, just throwing yourself down the hill like that-?"
She laughed then. "No, dear. Not falling down the hill. Climbing back up."
"Are you sure?"
"It always works for me. I"m lucky that way."
It began to come home to me then that maybe I didn"t know all there was to know about her. I began to sense a steel-trap deadliness of purpose operating somewhere behind that baby stare and sensuous face. She was as tough as a shark, and she got what she wanted. She"d be hard to whip, because she got fat on her enemies. She got in trouble on a sawdust pile, so she used the sawdust pile to cure it.
She motioned to me to squat down beside her. "Light me a cigarette, Harry?" she said.
I got one out, and in the brief, yellow flare of the match she looked up at me with eyes that were almost black. Her face and body were shiny with sweat, and sawdust was sticking to her and to her clothes.
She glanced down at herself. "d.a.m.n," she said. "I should have taken them off, shouldn"t I?"
She reached coolly around behind her and unsnapped the halter and slipped out of it. She shook it, and then brushed carelessly at the sawdust on her b.r.e.a.s.t.s. I was still holding the cigarette and the match. She looked up at my face and smiled at what she saw there, then reached out and took the cigarette from me. The match burned down and scorched the ends of my fingers. I cursed, my voice sounding strange and almost unrecognizable.
"Poor old Harry," she said tantalizingly, out of the sudden darkness. "He doesn"t like me."
"You lousy little witch," I said, trying to talk past the choking tightness in my throat. "What"s it got to do with liking you?"
"I told you we were a lot alike, didn"t I?"
"Yes. And don"t do it again."
I saw the red trail of the cigarette as she threw it out into the darkness of the ravine. She took hold of my hand and placed it against her cheek. "Lean down, Harry. You want to kiss me, don"t you?"
I leaned down. I couldn"t help it. There was a roaring like a big river inside my head. I shifted the hand down to her throat. "I"ll kill you," I said. "So help me, I"ll kill you."
"No, you won"t," she said softly. "Not now. Just kiss me now."
Her arms went up around my neck and tightened. And then we were slipping over the edge. Another big slide of sawdust gave way and we were half-buried in it, locked together and tumbling, sliding, rolling over and over all the way to the bottom. We came to rest somewhere at last and the world stopped whirling and settled into place. Her arms were still tight around me and her lips were against my ear. They were moving, and the whisper was ragged and frantic, and then incoherent in its urgency. It was very dark there in the ravine under the trees. It was just as well.
"And you thought you could leave me."
I lay there, hating her, not touching her but knowing how near she was in the darkness. I didn"t say anything.
"You and that prissy little owl. That Sunday-school kid. You think you could leave me for her?"
"I told you. I"m through. This is the last time."
"That"s what you think.
"About us. We belong together. If you left me, you"d come back. What"s the use of trying to kid yourself? We"re just two people who take what we want, and we belong together. We need each other. You said I was a tramp; well, did you ever stop to think you"re one too?"
"So you admit it? Why"d you throw an ice-cube tray at me that night?"
"I"m just touchy when I"m drunk. I don"t know why. I always suspect everybody of thinking I"m a b.i.t.c.h. And when I"m sober I couldn"t care less."
"Well, that"s a break."
"Why?"
"Is there anybody who thinks you"re not one?"
"You couldn"t prove it by me. But I do all right. So do you. I know what I want, and I get it."
"Well, let"s get something straight. You think I"m going to marry you? Haven"t you forgotten something?"
"What"s that?"
"Well, there are actually several things. One is that I wouldn"t marry you on a bet. I"ve already been married to one big-hearted girl who couldn"t remember where she lived, and once around the course is enough for any man. But the big thing I had in mind is that you"ve already got a husband. Remember? Or do you, very often?"
"Probably as often as you do. But never mind about him. He got everything he paid for."
"What do you mean?"
"Do you know why we came back from Galveston today?"
I"d forgotten about that. "No. How could I?"
"He had a heart attack."
"What!"
"It was the second one."