Флетчер Флора - Leave Her to Hell

I started to refer again to corn, but I thought better of it. Then I thought that it would probably be a good time to leave, and I turned and went as far as the door.

“Hand,” he said.

“Yes,” I said.

“Forget it. Drop it. You hear me?”

“I hear you,” I said.

I opened the door and went out. After three steps in the hall, I heard the piano. What I heard from it was something else by Chopin.

On the way in, no one had spoken to me. On the way out, someone did. The lower hall was the place, and Robin Robbins was the person. She was standing in the entrance to the cocktail lounge, at the edge of the shallow step, and although she was standing erect, like a lady, she somehow gave the impression of leaning indolently against an immaterial lamppost. Her voice was lazy, threaded with a kind of insolent amusement.

“Buy me a drink?” she said.

“I’m too poor,” I said.

“Tough. Let me buy you one.”

“I’m too proud.”

“Poor and proud. My God, it sounds like something by Horatio Alger.”

“Junior.”

“What?”

“Horatio Alger, Junior. You forgot the junior.”

“I’m sorry I didn’t forget him altogether. What do you say we start trying?”

“I’m surprised you know anything about him to start trying to forget. He was a long time ago, honey. Were kids still reading him when you were a kid?”

“I wouldn’t know. I was never a kid. I was born old and just got older.”

“Like me. That gives us something in common, I guess. Maybe we ought to have that drink together after all. I’ll buy.”

“No. I’ve got a better idea for a poor, proud man. In my apartment there’s a bottle of Scotch left over from another time. Someone gave it to me. We could go there and drink out of it for free.”

“I don’t care for Scotch. It tastes like medicine.”

“There’s a bottle of bourbon there too. In case you don’t care for bourbon, there’s rye.”

“No brandy? No champagne?”

“Anything you want.”

“That’s quite a selection to be left over from other times. Was it all given to you?”

“Why not? People are always giving me something. They seem to enjoy it.”

“Thanks for offering to share the wealth. However, I don’t think so. Some other time, maybe.”

She opened a small purse she was holding in her hands and extracted a cigarette. I went closer and supplied a light. She inhaled and exhaled and stared into the smoke with her smoky eyes. Her breath coming out with the smoke made a soft, sighing sound.

“Suit yourself,” she said. “It’s just that I’ve got something I thought you might be interested in.”

“You’ve got plenty I might be interested in, honey.”

She dragged again and sighed again. The smoke thinned and hung in a pale blue haze between us. In her eyes was a suggestion of something new. Something less than insolence, a little more than amusement. Her lush little mouth curved amiably.

“That’s not quite what I meant, but it’s something to consider. What I meant was something I can tell you.”

“Information? Is it free like the Scotch and the bourbon and the rye? Don’t forget I’m a guy who wears ready-made suits.”

“I remember. Poor and proud and probably honest. Right out of H. Alger, Junior. Don’t worry about it, though. It’s free like the Scotch and the bourbon and the rye.”

“Everything free. No price on anything. I hope you won’t be offended, honey, but somehow I got an idea it’s out of character.”

“All right. Forget it. You were asking questions about a couple of people, and I thought you were interested. My mistake, Horatio.”

Her mouth curved now in the opposite direction from amiability. What had been in her eyes was gone, and what replaced it was contempt. I thought in the instant before she turned away that she was going to spit on the floor. Before she could descend the step and walk away nicely on her nice legs with the neat movement of her neat behind, I took a step and put a hand on her arm, and we stood posed that way for a second or two or longer, she arrested and I arresting, and then she turned her head and looked at me over her shoulder.

“Yes?” she said.

“Make mine bourbon,” I said.

We went the rest of the way down the hall together and down the two steps and outside. Beside the building was a paved parking lot reserved for patrons, and I had left my car there, although I was not properly a patron. We walked around and got into the car and drove in it to her apartment, which was in a nice building on a good street. It was on the fifth floor, which we reached by elevator, and it didn’t have any terrace that got the sun in the afternoon, or any terrace at all, or any of many features that the apartment of Faith Salem had, including several acres. But it was a nice enough apartment just the same — a far better apartment than any I had ever lived in or probably ever would. Besides, it was certainly something that someone had just wanted to give her. For a consideration, of course. An exchange, in a way, of commodities.

“Fix a bourbon for yourself,” she said. “For me too, in water. I’ll be back in a minute.”

She went out of the room and was gone about five times as long as the minute. In the meanwhile, I found ingredients and mixed two bourbon highballs and had them ready when she returned. She looked just the same as she’d looked when she’d gone, which was good enough to be disturbing.

“I lose,” I said.

“Some people always do,” she said. “Lose what, exactly?”

“A bet. With myself. I bet you’d gone to get into something more comfortable.”

“Why should I? What I’m wearing is comfortable enough. There’s practically nothing to it.”

I was facing her with a full glass in each hand. She approached me casually, as if she were going to ask for a light or brush a crumb off my tie. She kept right on walking, right into me, and put her arms around my neck and her mouth on my mouth, and I stood there with my arms projecting beyond her on both sides, the damn glasses in my hands, and we remained static and breathless in this position for quite a long time. Finally she stepped back and helped herself to the glass in one of my hands. She took a drink and tilted her head and subjected me and my effect to a smoldering appraisal.

“I’ve always wanted to kiss a man as ugly as you,” she said. “It wasn’t bad.”

“Thanks,” I said. “I’ve had worse myself.”

“I’m wondering if it’s good enough to develop. I think it might be.”

“You go on wondering about it and let me know.”

“I’ll do that.”

She moved over to a chair and lowered herself onto her neat behind and crossed her nice legs. From where I found a chair and sat, across from her, I could see quite a lot of the legs. She didn’t mind, and neither did I.

“If you decide to develop it,” I said, “won’t Silas Lawler object?”

She swallowed some more of her highball and looked into what was left. Her soft and succulent little mouth assumed lax and ugly lines.

“To hell with Silas Lawler,” she said.

“Don’t kid me,” I said. “I know he pays the bills.”

“So he pays the bills. There’s one bill he may owe that he hasn’t paid. If he owes it, I want him to pay in full.”

“For what?”

“For the murder of Regis Lawler.”

She continued to look into her glass. From her expression, she must have seen something offensive on the bottom. I looked into mine and saw nothing but good whisky and pure water. I drained it.

“Maybe you don’t know what you said,” I said.

“I know what I said. I said he may owe it. I’d like to know.”