John MacDonald - The Girl in the Plain Brown Wrapper

“What will you do?”

“Get very firm with myself. Tell myself it was a no-good thing. Chin up, tummy in, walk straight, girl. Think of him every three minutes of every waking hour for two or three or four days, and then dial the private line in his office and humble myself and whimper and beg and apologize for things I didn’t do. And be ashamed of myself and kind of sick-joyful at the same time.”

“No character, hey?”

“I used to think I had lots. He got to me in... a kind of physical way. I think of him and get to wanting him so bad my head hums and my ears roar and the world gets tilty.”

“Hmm. Humiliating?”

“That’s the word. I want out. I want free. So while I was in your bathroom blubbering because he walked out, I had this idea of how to get loose, if I could work up enough nerve.”

“Use me to solve your problem?”

“I thought you’d jump at the chance. Not because I’m so astonishingly lovely, something that turns all the heads when I walk by. But I’ve had to learn that there is some damned thing about me that seems to work pretty good. I mean if I was in some saloon with Miss International Asparagus Patch, and a man moved in on us because he drew a bead on her, a lot of the time he’d switch targets, and I’ve never known why it happens, but it does. That’s why I was so sure I could pick you up in the bar.”

“You do project a message.”

“Wish I knew what the message reads.”

“I think it says, ‘Here I am!’ ”

“Darn it. I like men. As men. Six brothers. I was the only girl. I’ve never been able to really be a girl-girl, luncheons and girl talk and all that. But I don’t go shacking around. I love to make love, sure. But it never seemed to be any kind of real necessity, you know? Except now I’m hung up that way with Rick, and I don’t even like him very much. I don’t even know if... it would be any good at all with another man nowadays. I thought you’d be a good way to find out. I thought, once I’d pumped up the nerve, one little opening and Pow. Easier to play drunk. Hardly know you. Won’t see you again. So you come on with these scruples. Or maybe my mysterious whatzit isn’t on your wavelength, dear. Oh, Christ! I feel so awkward and timid and dumb. I never tried to promote a stranger before, honest.”

“So if nothing much happened, wouldn’t you be hung up worse than ever?”

“No. Because it would keep me from having the guts to phone him. After sleeping with you — win, lose, or draw — I’d feel too guilty. And that would give me the time to finally get over it. You see, I always have to go crawling to him. If when he doesn’t hear from me, he comes after me, I don’t know if I can stay in the clear. But... it would give me a pretty good chance.”

She gave that deep long sigh once more. Strange little freckled lady, radiating something indefinable, something lusty and gutsy. Something playtime. So the world is a wide shadowy place, with just a few times, a few corners, where strangers touch. And she could be a partial cure for the random restlessness of the past weeks. Ol’ Dr. McGee. Home therapy. The laying on of hands. Therapeutic manipulation. The hunger that isn’t a damned bit interested in names or faces is always there, needing only a proper fragment of rationalization to emerge. So I drifted my fingertips along the sad curl of her back and found the same old zipper tab and slowly pulled it from nape to stern. She pushed up, swarmy-eyed, hair-tousled, to make the opening gift of her mouth in her acceptance.

But stopped and focused, frowned. “It’s a sad story, okay. But it isn’t that sad! It shouldn’t make a strong man cry.”

“I’m not. You got me in the eye with your elbow a while back.”

Hers was a good laugh, belly laugh, total surrender to laughter, enough for tears, but with no edge of hysteria. While I got the lights, she hung her dress on a hanger and turned the bed down. We left the bathroom door ajar, a strip of light angling across the foot of the bed. She was constricted and muscle-taut and nervous for a time but not for long. And after more unmeasured time had gone by, I found out just what that mysterious aura was. It was clean, solid, healthy, joyous, inexhaustible girl, all clovery oils and pungencies, long limber waist and torso sophisticating the rhythmic counterpoint of solid, heated, thirsty hips, creating somehow along with release the small awarenesses of new hunger soon to rebuild.

I awakened slowly to the morning sound of her shower and drifted off again, and was awakened a little later by sun-brightness shining into the darkened room, and saw her naked by the double draperies, holding the edge away from the window while she peered out at the day. With her other hand she was foamily scrubbing away at her teeth with my toothbrush and toothpaste.

She turned away from the window and, seeing that my eyes were open, she roamed over to the bed, still scrubbing.

“... ood oring, arley.”

“And good morning to you too, tiger.”

“O you O eye.”

“What?”

Removed brush. “I said I hope you don’t mind. Me using your toothbrush. I mean invasions of privacy are sort of relative, huh?”

“Like the old joke, it’s been the equivalent of a social introduction.”

When she started brushing again, I reached and caught her by the free wrist, pulled her closer. She removed brush, stared thoughtfully at me. “Really? You’re serious?” She smiled. “Well sure! Let me go rench.” She went into the bathroom. The water ran. The sound of spitting was p-too, p-tooey , like a small child. She came trotting back, beaming, launched herself into the bed, landing solidly, reaching greedily, and saying an anticipatory “Yum” with utmost comfortable satisfaction. In her own special field of expertise she was the least clumsy thing in probably the entire county.

After we were dressed, she began to be increasingly nervous about leaving a motel room at high noon on Saturday. She was almost certain Rick was out there, waiting in murderous patience. Or that a group of her friends would be strolling by the room, for some unknown reason. She put the wig on as a partial disguise. She had me go out and start the motor in the rental, open the door on her side, and tap the horn ring when I was certain the coast was clear.

She came out at a hunched-over half gallop and while scrambling into the car she gave her knee such a hell of a whack on the edge of the door that she spent the first three blocks all scrooched down, hugging her knee and moaning. Then from time to time she would stick her head up just far enough to see where we were and give me directions. She had an apartment in a little garden apartment development called Ridge Lane. After she insisted I drive around two blocks twice to make certain Rick’s red convertible wasn’t parked in the area, I drove into her short, narrow drive behind the redwood privacy fence and stopped a few inches behind the rear bumper of her faded blue Volkswagen in the carport. She spelled Woertz for me and said she was in the book. But I had the feeling she did not want me to call her. I had performed the required service. She did not want to trade one entanglement for another.

I remembered a question I had forgotten to ask. “By the way, what were you people hoping to find on my person, Penny?”

She shrugged. “We didn’t know, really. Anything that would tie you in somehow. Papers or money or letters or notes or something. When you come to a blind alley, you’re ready to try almost anything.”

We sat there and suddenly both yawned at once, great luxurious shuddering jaw-creakers. Then laughed at ourselves. She kissed me, got out, and gave a squeak of pain when she put her weight on her leg. She bent and rubbed her sore knee, then limped to her door. When she had unlocked it and opened it, she smiled and waved and I backed out.