Фредерик Браун - Ed McBain’s Mystery Book, No. 3,1961

“If you want me to put the word in with casting...” he repeated. “If you want me to make the call right now...” He pointed at the phone at the side of his king-size bed; the spread was of thick candlewick embroidered with ranch brands and his name across the middle; he had to get this creep Rhoda out of here before the San Marino doll put in an appearance, and that was within the half hour; damn, how would he explain the broken window and the broken glass? “What’s the point in chewing the past, Rhoda?” he asked. “Let’s plan a little future. Yes?”

“I’ve got no future.” Her voice was dull and she rubbed her eye with a finger to smear some of the dark pencil. “I’m washed up and out. But what make* me wonder is why?” Lips screwed into twin lines of anguish, she turned away to stare at a lamp base made of cactus; the shade had once been an Indian ceremonial drum. “Why you and not someone else?”

“Maybe it’s because I didn’t really want it,” he said.

“You didn’t want it?”

He traced his old initials in the carpeting with the toe of a custom boot, fitted by a firm that catered only to Texas and Oklahoma millionaires; one of each had sponsored his feet for measurement.

“I was broke when I got here and you were good to me and if you thought I’d come out to the Coast to be an actor, why make a friend unhappy?” he explained. “Come on, Rhoda.” He wanted her to see his impatience. “I want you to get aholt of yourself.”

“Why?”

“Because we’re still friends, I hope.”

She pointed to the bed. “Prove it”

“You’re drunk. If you don’t get out, I’m gonna call the super — the cops.” He paused to negate this threat; scandal was the last thing Tucson wanted when he was waiting for Miss San Marino and everything she stood for. He had told her, this slender, poised, low-voiced graduate of the Marlborough School and Mills and member of The Spinsters, just who he was, where he had come from, and it hadn’t mattered because she had brushed his lips and told him that they lived in a democracy, didn’t they, and too much inbreeding did to people what it had done to cocker spaniels — made them stupid. Although it had troubled him to be thought of in terms of a stud, he consoled himself with the knowledge that the stalls of sound horseflesh were always cleaner than a bunkhouse. But he had also learned to take the bad if it was part of the good, and someday soon he would have to write to his father and invite him out, and the invitation would pointedly ignore his mother; she shore could’ve stood off a passel of Injuns by her lonesome.

“Rhoda, doll,” he cajoled, both palms pressed together in prayer, “tell me how much you need and give me your number so that me and casting can call you?”

“I don’t think I can act any more,” she said. “I’ve suffered too much. And that burns you out. Just like a rocket.” She raised her right arm in trajectory. “You suffer and glow and light up the sky all around you. Then you just drop. A black nothing falling through a deeper black and no one sees you. And if they did” — she paused to sniffle against a knuckle — “no one cares.”

“That’s not bad, Rhoda. Not bad at all!” He crossed to put both arms around her and interlace his fingers against the small of her back before he rested his chin against her forehead; that way she might not see his grimace of distaste because she smelled dirty, sweaty, of cheap toilet water and underarm deodorants; she should never have quit her job as a waitress, because that required cleanliness; then her hair, no matter how elaborate the setting or bizarre its color, had always been fresh. “You know, maybe you’ve been following the wrong thing all the while. Acting.” He raised a hand as if to wipe her face free of pain, for she had stepped back and he could see her unhappiness and the wild glints of — it could be all the feathers coming loose in her bonnet — but call it frustration in her eyes, suddenly bleary as tears wet her lashes and ran into the blue shadow and black outline to make Rhoda look as if she had just been declared loser in a free-for-all. “Any girl who can express herself like that ought to be writing. That’s it!” His fingers snapped with the suddenness of decision and surety that delighted Tucson’s younger fans; the national imitation was of concern to certain child-guidance clinics. “I’m gonna see about having you put on as a writer! You’ll have to join the Writers Guild, but anybody can do that, and maybe you can come up with some woman’s-angle stories written by someone who is one instead of a wishful thinker. That’s it, Rhoda doll.” He was genuinely pleased with himself and the absence of protest as he led her from the bedroom and through the living room toward the two steps that rose to the foyer and the front door. “You made an actor outa me. So I’m gonna make you into a writer.”

Overconfident that he had done as well in real life as Tucson would do as guided by script and director, he had relaxed his hold on Rhoda’s arm and could not keep his grip as she wrenched free, tearing the thin elbow of her sweater. Her breasts rose like two eight balls as her fingers plucked at the torn elbow to enlarge the tear before she ran for her purse, fumbled in its deep interior and came up with a gun. Eyes hot with rage, she moved slowly toward him.

He recognized the Frontier Colt with the carved bone grip because it was similar to one that he carried in the series, and she laughed as he ran to the bedroom and returned quickly to swear at her in an accomplished monotone, for she had ransacked his bureau, found the gun, and it was loaded.

“You’ve got such good publicity.” She held the gun on him as she relaxed in the sofa. “Publicity that tells how you keep one of your guns everywhere so you can keep practicing and practicing your quick draw. Tell me” — she leaned forward — “did you really win that quick-draw contest at San Jose?”

“I’ll answer after you give me the gun. Crazy broad, is that the way to treat a friend? Maybe that’s why I stopped being your friend,” he said accusingly. “Because you stopped behaving like a friend.”

“Who stopped seeing who?” she began to shout. “Who took you around? Introduced you? Got you a job parking cars at the Interlude so you’d get the attention of people? Who got you plants in the trades and paid for your Screen Extra’s card? Who?” She screamed and punctuated her questions with jabbing movements of the gun. “You’d better answer who!”

“You did,” he admitted. “Now put that gun down.”

“I’m giving the orders,” she continued. “Tucson!” She spat the name. “You’re just plain stinkin’ Sam Slocum to me. Some name. And you can even thank me for writing a fan letter to 4-Square and getting all the people I knew to write also that we liked your new name and the part you were playing. That’s what a friend does.” She was mournful. “That’s why it hurts so much.”

The girl from San Marino prided herself on punctuality. People looked so alike, she said, with all the luxuries available for purchase on five down and five when you were dunned, and credit cards handed out to anyone who asked for them, that it was well nigh impossible to identify people that really mattered except by little secret habits, and she considered punctuality as one of the more important contemporary identifications. Which meant she would be pressing the button in fifteen minutes and when the chords of his theme music would sound, she would expect him at the door, promptly, smiling, leaning forward to kiss her gently; ardor would come later.

“Some hero,” she wept. “Lets my hand go when I needed a lift. When I’m scraping bottom so hard all the skin’s rubbed off.”