Ричард Деминг: Manhunt. Volume 3, Number 1, January, 1955

He reached out and pressed one of the buttons. In a couple of seconds the radio began to give out with a jump tune from somebody’s all-night platter show. An old jump tune. Seven years old, anyway.

“Remember that one?” he asked. “Remember how we used to feed nickels in the juke box so we could kick that one around? Takes a dime now. Seems like everything’s a lot more expensive than it was seven years ago.”

“How expensive, Tony?”

If the woman had been looking at him, she would have seen how his mouth twisted upward at the corners. But she didn’t look at him, and he didn’t answer her. The brasses took a chorus and then the piano came up strong. Whoever was playing it must have had ten fingers on each hand. Then the bass came in like the amplified heartbeat of a bad case of hypertension.

“You can’t beat the old tunes,” Tony said. “The old tunes, the old days... the old loves. Sometimes, when I was sweating out those seven years for you, baby, I’d wake up in the night and forget where I was. I’d reach out for you in the darkness and grab an armful of air, and then lie awake all night going crazy with memories. We did have some good times in the old days. Even you must remember that.”

“I stopped remembering,” Crystal said, “a long time ago.”

“Before you knew me?”

There was no answer but the whine of the tires as they took the turns. The street was developing curves now. The little shops and the markets had been replaced by neatly clipped lawns and a geraniums.

“It must have been before you knew me,” Tony said. “You must have started forgetting early to be such an expert so young... But I couldn’t forget. I’d keep remembering how I used to feel whenever I worked the late show and came home to find you out at that dive again. It’s in the blood, I guess. Once a saloon tramp, always a saloon tramp. But it didn’t matter. That’s the crazy part of this whole thing, baby. Whatever you did, I made excuses. Even when you took that money I blamed myself because I was just a lousy movie projectionist and couldn’t make enough to give you the things you wanted.”

Suddenly the man threw back his head and laughed, high-pitched and humorless.

“Remember how I used to tinker around in the basement trying to invent something that would make us rich? Always something. Always some new idea I was going to turn into a fortune so I could dress you in mink...”

He reached out and stroked the soft fur where it rested close to her throat. There was no pressure in his feeling fingers, but she trembled slightly at the touch.

“... Always something,” he murmured. “I used to think about that whenever I read about one of your divorce settlements. I guess no invention is ever going to improve on nature.”

“A girl has to live!” Crystal snapped. “She can’t wait around for some tinkering fool forever! She has to live!”

“Are you sure of that, baby? Are you real sure?” The laugh came again, thin as the distance between his fingers and her throat. “I could have saved those suckers a lot of money if I’d sounded off, couldn’t I? Me, the jailbird Crystal Coe couldn’t acknowledge even to a judge... But that would have spoiled everything.”

“For both of us, Tony.”

“For both of us,” he echoed. The fingers touched her skin now, slowly, carefully, they barely touched her skin. “Now you’re getting the idea, Crystal. That’s what I’ve had in mind all these years. So Tony kept his mouth shut and just went on remembering and tinkering. They have places for that even in stir. Always something. Always figuring something...”

“How much, Tony?” she asked. “You’re not the only one who likes expensive things, baby. Seven years of hunger can sure give a man an appetite for expensive things.”

“I asked you: how much?”

“For what I want, you won’t need your checkbook.”

“Then what?”

The crooked smile sliced across the man’s face again, and the fingers were real busy now.

“I just told you,” he said. “Seven years is a long time to live on memories... What do you think I want, Crystal? After all, I’m still your husband.”

When the record stopped playing on that platter show the announcer started selling used cars and Crystal’s hand plunged him into silence. For a few blocks it was terribly quiet. All that horsepower under the hood barely whispered at the darkness, and the street elbowed in close to the hills where even the wind was subdued. The lawns were wide and deep now, and the night had that lush hush of a neighborhood where nobody worries in public.

... Silence, and then a woman’s voice speaking as unemotionally as if the man in the shabby suit had suggested stopping someplace for a nightcap or a cup of coffee.

“I’ll have to stop for gas,” she said, glancing at the instrument panel again. “The tank’s nearly empty.”

“And then what?” the man asked.

“There won’t be anyone at the beach house tonight. We never use it in winter.”

Just like that. No argument at all. The smile lingered on the man’s face. The specialty of the house wasn’t so expensive after all if you had a membership. Just ahead the white glow of a twenty-four hour service station came into view like an actor responding to cue, and the little green arrow on the instrument panel clicked the left hand warning for all the traffic that wasn’t in sight. As the convertible slid alongside the gas pumps the man began to laugh again. He was laughing like a fool by the time the station jockey poked his head in the window.

“Fill it up,” Crystal said, and whirled about to meet the laughter. There wasn’t a trace of that marble face make-up now. She was wearing a colorful blend of bewilderment and anger.

“Where are you going?” she demanded.

Tony’s hand was on the door handle. “That’s my business,” he said. “This is where we part company.”

“I don’t understand—”

“I’ll bet you don’t! Nobody ever walked out on you, did they, baby? Nobody ever turned down such an invitation! That’s what I figured while I was giving you the big buildup about the hungry years. I wanted you to learn how it feels to have the only thing you can offer thrown back in your face... Don’t you get it, baby? I’m the chump who sweated out seven years in a cell because I loved you. You were in my blood, even when I knew about all those other guys. I used to rip your pictures apart, pretending they were you! A thousand times I’ve smashed your face until it wouldn’t look good to any man; a hundred times I’ve killed you in a hundred ways! All these years I’ve dreamed of what I’d do when I got out and found you again...

“... Last night I did find you. I went to that club where you sing, if that’s what they call it now, and I saw the woman I’d gone through so much hell for, — just a cheap, overdressed saloon tramp, that’s all. Seven years is enough to give any saloon tramp. I went back to my hotel and wrote you that note just so you’d know I was out again, so you could do the sweating for a change; but I never intended to see you again. I’ve had it, baby. I’m cured. I don’t need your dirty money, and I don’t want you in that beach house or anywhere else. I wouldn’t touch you if this was the coldest night of the year!”

It wasn’t cold at all. In the last few moments the temperature had gone high in the front seat of that fancy convertible, and there was no button to press that would cool it off. Anger, surprise, and something else livened Crystal’s face; something like excitement. Her package had been delivered C.O.D., but she wasn’t ready to let the delivery man go.

“Wait! Not here!” she commanded. “Don’t get out yet!”

Tony drew back from the door. “I get it,” he said. “The station man — you’re known here.”