Donald Westlake - The New Black Mask ( No 3 )

“But you’ve been going out.” Manny smiled at me thinly. “You’ve been going out and staying out for hours.”

“What?” I said. “Why do you say that?”

“Why?” she said. “Yes, why do I? I’ve certainly no right to make an issue of it.”

And before I could say anything more, she nodded coldly and drove away.

I looked after her as her car sped down the driveway and turned into the road, became lost in the dust of the ubiquitous dump trucks wending their way toward the garbage hummocks.

I turned away, vaguely troubled, and moved absently toward the porch.

I went up the steps, still discomfited and puzzled by Manny’s attitude, but grateful that Kay had not discovered me in my fracture of a strict order. One of the few unhappy aspects of sex is that it places you much too close physically while you are still mentally poles apart. So that a categorical imperative is apt to be juxtaposed with a constitutional impossibility, for how can one kick some one — or part of some one — that he has laved with love.

I couldn’t face up to the consequences of Kay Nolton’s throwing her weight around with me again. No sadist I, I could not slug the provably and delightfully screwable.

I reached the top step, and—

There was a sudden angry sound at my ear, the buzz of a maddened hornet The hornet zoomed in and stung me painfully on the forehead, the sting burning like acid.

I slapped at it, then rubbed the tortured flesh with my fingers. As a boy, growing up on the old place, I had been “hit” by hornets many times. But I could remember none having the effect of this one.

It was numbing, almost as if I had been hit by an instrument that was at once edged and blunt. I felt a little dizzy and faint, and—

I took my hand away from my head.

I stared at it stupidly.

It was red and wet, dripping with blood, and more blood was dripping down onto the age-faded wood of the porch.

My knees buckled slowly, and I sank down to them. My eyes closed, and I slowly toppled over and lay prone.

My last thought, before I lost consciousness, was of Manny. Her indirect insistence that I accompany her to her car. The hurt in her voice and her eyes when I had hesitated about leaving the safety of the house — hurt which I could only expunge by doing what I had been sternly ordered not to do.

So I had done as she wanted because I loved her and believed in her.

And then, loving and trusting her, I had remained out in the open, exposed to the danger which is always latent in loving and trusting.

I had lingered at the side of her car, pleading with her. And she had sat with her back turned to me, her gaze searching the landscape, apparently searching it for…? A signal? A rifle, say, with a telescopic sight.

I heard myself laugh, even as the very last of my consciousness glimmered away. Because, you see, it was really terribly funny. Almost as funny as it was sad.

I had always shunned guns, always maintaining that guns had been known to kill people and even defenseless animals, and that those who fooled around with guns had holes in their heads. And now, I… I… I had been… and I had a hole in my…

When I came back into my consciousness, I was lying on my own bed, and Kay was hunkered down at the bedside, staring anxiously into my face.

I started to rear up, but she pressed me back upon the pillows. I stammered nonsensically, “What… why… where… how… and then the jumble in my mind cleared, and I said, “How did I get up here? Who brought me up?”

“Shhh,” said Kay. “I — we made it together, remember? With me steering you, and hanging on to you for dear life.”

“Mrs. Olmstead helped you. I wouldn’t have thought the old gal had it in her.”

“Mrs. Olmstead isn’t back yet. She’s never around when you need her for anything. Now, will you just shut up for goodness’ sake, and tell me how — Doggone it, anyway!” Kay scowled, her voice rising angrily. “It’s just too darned much! I have to follow that woman around, do everything over after she’s done it! I have to watch you every minute to keep you from doing something silly, and all I get is bawled out for it! I have to—”

“Oh, come on now,” I said, “it really isn’t that bad, is it?”

“Yes, it is! And now you’ve made me lose control of myself and act as crazy as you are! Now, you listen to me, Britt Rainstar! Are you listening?”

She was trembling with fury, her face an unrelieved white against the contrasting red of her hair. I tried to take her hand, and she knocked it away. Then she quickly recovered it and squeezed it, smiling at me determinedly through gritted teeth.

“I asked you if you were — Oh, the heck with it,” she said. “How are you feeling, honey?”

“Tol’able, ma’am,” I said. “Tolerable. How are you?”

She said she was darned mad, that’s how she was. Then she told me to hold still, dam it, and she tested the strip of adhesive bandage on my forehead. And then she leaned down and gently kissed it.

“Does it hurt very much, Britt?”

“You wouldn’t ask that if you were really a nurse.”

“What? What do you mean by that?”

“Anyone with the slightest smattering of medical knowledge knows that when you kiss something you make it well.”

“Ha!” She brushed her lips against mine. “You were told not to leave this house, Britt. Not under any circumstances. Why did you do it?”

“It wasn’t really going out,” I said. “I just saw Miss Aloe to her car.”

“And you got shot.”

“But there was no connection between the two events. She’d been gone for, oh, a couple of minutes when it happened.”

“What does that prove?”

“I’m sure she had nothing to do with it,” I said stubbornly. “She told me she was sorry for what she’d done, and she swore that there’d be no more trouble. And she was telling the truth! I know she was, Kay.”

“And I know you got shot,” Kay said. “I also know that I’ll get blamed for it. It’s not my fault. You practically threw me out of your office, and told me to leave you alone. I was only t-trying to look after you, b-but you—”

I cut in on her, telling her to listen to me and listen good. And when she persisted, obviously working herself up to a tear storm, I took her by the shoulders and shook her.

“Don’t you pull that on me!” I said. “Don’t pretend that that little stunt you pulled down in my office was an attempt to protect me. You were just being nosy. Acting like a jealous wife. Miss Aloe and I were discussing business, and—”

“Ha! I know her kind of business. She’s got her business right in her — Well, never mind. I won’t say it.”

She dropped her eyes, blushing. I stared at her grimly, and finally she looked up and asked me what I looking at.

“At you,” I said. “What’s with this blushing bit? I think it’s just about impossible for you to be embarrassed. I don’t think you’d be embarrassed if you rode naked through Coventry on a Kiddy-Kar with a bull’s-eye on each titty and a feather duster up your arse! You’ve repeatedly proved that you’re shameless, goddammit, yet you go around kicking shit, and turning red as a billy goat’s butt every time you see the letter p. You—”

“Oops!” said Kay. “Whoops!” And she lost her balance and went over backwards, sitting down on the floor with a thud. She sat thus, shaking and trembling, her hands covering her face, making rather strange and fearful sounds.

“What’s the matter?” I said. “Are you throwing a fit? That’s all I need, by God, a blushing fit-thrower!”

And her hands came away from her face, they were literally exploded, as she burst into wild peals of laughter. The force of it made me wince, but it was somehow contagious. I started laughing, too, laughing harder at each new blast from her. And the harder I laughed, the harder she laughed.