Эд Макбейн - Running From Legs and Other Stories

“Pas de citron pour toi?” she asked.

“I don’t like lemon.”

“It will taste vile without lemon,” she said.

“I don’t want to spoil the flavor of premium gin,” I said.

Dominique laughed.

“À votre santé,” I said, and clinked my glass against hers.

We both drank.

It went down like molten fire.

“Jesus!” I said.

“Whoooo!” she said.

“I think I’m going blind!”

“That is not something to joke about.”

The train began huffing and puffing.

“Are we leaving?” she asked.

“Enfin,” I said.

“Enfin, d’accord,” she said, and heaved a sigh of relief.

The train began moving. I thought of the train that had taken us from Calais to the front.

“Now we can relax,” she said.

I nodded.

“Do you think he’ll send someone after us?”

“Depends on how crazy he is.”

“I think he is very crazy.”

“So do I.”

“Then he will send someone.”

“Maybe.”

Dominique drew back the curtains on the outside window, lifted the shade. We were out of the tunnel now, already into the night. There were stars overhead. No moon.

“Best to just sip this stuff,” I said. “Otherwise...”

“Ah, oui, bien súr,” she said.

We sipped at the gin. The train was moving along swiftly now, flashing southward into the night.

“So you learned some French over there,” she said.

“A little.”

“Well... à votre santé... enfin... quite a bit of French, no?”

“Only enough to get by on.”

I was thinking of the German who had mistaken us for French troops and who’d pleaded with us in broken French to spare his life. I was thinking of his skull exploding when our patrol sergeant opened fire.

“This grows on you, doesn’t it?” I said.

“Actually, I think it’s very good,” she said. “I think it may even be real gin.”

“Maybe,” I said dubiously.

She looked over her glass at me. “Maybe next time there’s a war, you won’t have to go,” she said.

“Because I was wounded, do you mean?”

“Yes.”

“Maybe.”

The train raced through the night. The New Jersey countryside flashed by in the darkness. Telephone wires swooped and dipped between poles.

“They say there are thirty telephone poles to every mile,” I said.

“Vraiment?”

“Well, that’s what they say.”

“Turn off the lights,” she said. “It will look prettier outside.”

I turned off the lights.

“And open the window, please. It will be cooler.”

I tried pulling up one of the windows, but it wouldn’t budge. I finally got the other one up. Cool air rushed into the compartment. There was the smell of smoke from the engine up ahead, cinders and soot on the night.

“Ahhh, yes,” she said, and sighed deeply.

Outside, the world rushed past.

We sat sipping the gin, watching the distant lights.

“Do you think Mr. Diamonds will have us killed?”

“Mr. Diamond,” I said. “Singular. Legs Diamond .”

“I wonder why they call him Legs.”

“I don’t know.”

She fell silent. Staring through the window. Face in profile. Touched only by starshine.

“I love the sound of the wheels,” she said, and sighed again. “Trains are so sad.”

I was thinking the very same thing.

“I’m getting sleepy, are you?” she asked.

“A little.”

“I think I’ll get ready for bed.”

“I’ll step outside,” I said, and started to get up.

“No, stay,” she said, and then, “It’s dark.”

She rose, reached up to the overhead rack, and took down her suitcase. She snapped open the locks, and lifted the lid. She reached behind her, then, and unbuttoned the buttons at the back of her dress and pulled the dress up over her head.

I turned away, toward the windows.

We were coming through a stretch of farmland, lights only in the far distance now, nothing close to the tracks. The single closed window reflected Dominique in black lingerie from my grandmother’s “Flirty Flapper” line, rolled black seamed silk stockings, black lace-edged bra designed to flatten her breasts, black lace-edged tap pants.

The blackness of the night reflected her.

“Pour me some more gin, please,” she said.

Softly.

I spooned ice into her glass, unscrewed the flask’s top, poured gin over the ice. Silver spilled from silver onto silver. Behind me, there was the rustle of silk.

“A little lemon, please,” she said.

In the reflecting window, she was naked now. Pale as starlight.

She took a nightgown out of the suitcase.

I squeezed another quarter-lemon, dropped it into the glass. I squirted soda into the glass. She dropped the nightgown over her head. It slid down past her breasts and hips and thighs. I turned to her, she turned to me. In the nightgown, she looked almost medieval. The gown was either silk or rayon, as white as snow, its yoke neck trimmed with white lace. My grandmother’s “Sleeptite” line.

I handed Dominique her drink.

“Thank you,” she said, and looked at my empty glass on the table. “None for you?” she asked.

“I think I’ve had enough.”

“Just a sip,” she said. “To drink a toast. I can’t drink a toast all alone.”

I dropped some ice into my glass, poured a little gin over it.

She raised her glass.

“To now,” she said.

“There’s no such thing,” I said.

“Tonight, then. There is surely tonight.”

“Yes. I suppose.”

“Will you drink to tonight, then?”

“To tonight,” I said.

“And to us.”

I looked at her.

“To us, Richard.”

“To us,” I said.

We drank.

“Doesn’t this table move out of the way?” she asked.

“I think it folds down,” I said.

“Can you fold it down?”

“If you like.”

“Well, I think it’s in the way, don’t you?”

“I guess it is.”

“Well, then, please fold it down, Richard.”

I moved everything from the table to the wide sill just inside the window. I got on my knees then, looked under the table, figured out how the hinge and clasp mechanism worked, and lowered the top.

“Voilà!” Dominique said triumphantly.

I picked up my drink from the windowsill. We both sat, Dominique on one bed, I on the other, facing each other, our knees almost touching. Outside, the countryside rolled by, an occasional light splintering the dark.

“I wish we had music,” she said. “We could dance again. There’s enough room for dancing now, don’t you think? With the table down?”

I looked at her skeptically; the space between the beds was perhaps three feet wide by six feet long.

“Without being interrupted this time,” she said, and tossed her head and began swaying from side to side.

“I shouldn’t have let him cut in,” I said.

“Well, how could you have known?”

“I saw his eyes.”

“Behind you? When he was cutting in?”

“Earlier. I should have known. Seeing those eyes.”

“Dance with me now,” she said, and held out her arms.

“We don’t have music,” I said.

She moved in close against me.

The soft silken feel of her.

“Ja-Da,” she sang.

Slowly.

Very slowly.

“Ja-Da...”

Not at all in the proper tempo.

“Ja-Da, Ja-Da...

“Jing... jing... jing.”

I thought at first...

“Ja-Da...”

What I thought...

“Ja-Da...”

Was that...

“Ja-Da, Ja-Da...”

Was that a fierce thrust of her crotch accompanied each...