Lawrence Block - Chip Harrison Scores Again

“Maybe it’s me,” she said.

“Maybe what is?”

“I don’t know.”

It was the middle of the week and the lunch hour was only twenty minutes over with. We had another half hour to ourselves and had already done what we did during lunch hours. Usually we would take our time, but this afternoon she didn’t want to pause along the way and admire the view. She just wanted to get there full speed ahead, and she did and I did, and it was very nice.

But now she was in a mood, and it was something I wasn’t used to with her. I asked her what was the matter.

“Oh, nothing,” she said. “Just that you seem all wrapped up in thoughts lately, and you might as well be a hundred miles away.”

“I’m right here,” I said, and touched her to prove it.

She moved my hand away. “Have you been thinking things, Chip?”

“Nothing in particular.”

“Oh.”

“I always think things,” I said. “I mean, I’m alone a lot, so I’ll let my mind just wander off on its own some of the time.”

“You like doing that?”

“It beats talking to yourself.”

“I do that sometimes. Talk to myself. I don’t think much, though.”

“Uh.”

“I guess you must think I’m awful simple.”

“What makes you say that, Lucille?”

“I don’t know. Maybe on account of it’s true.”

“I don’t think so.”

“Just an old preacher’s daughter. Never been anywhere and never done anything.”

“You’ve done a few things.”

She sat up suddenly and put her legs over the side of the bed. Without looking at me she said, “Do you know what it’s like when you start thinking things and you can’t stop? You don’t want to think them but there they all are in your head and you can’t make them stop?”

“I know.”

“Does it sometimes happen to you?”

“A lot of the time.”

“It never happened to me before. I would just, oh, you know, I would just go along. Hardly thinking about anything, and if I ever had a thought that bothered me I would just whisk it off out of my head and not think about it anymore. Like a program on the television that you don’t want to watch so you turn it off. But now I can’t do that.”

“What’s bothering you?”

“You know what it’s like? Like having that bad television program going on in a set that’s inside of your head, and there’s no way you can turn it off or pull the plug or change the channel, so what do you do?”

“Pray for a commercial,” I suggested.

“Oh, you don’t see what I mean.”

“Yes, I do. I’m sorry, Lucille. It was just a dumb joke.”

“No commercials and the program’s never through, it just goes on. I reckon that’s why Daddy drinks. You know he told me about it once. He said one day he looked into his soul and saw something there that he couldn’t bear the sight of, and drink kept him from seeing it. And I always thought, well, why didn’t he think on something else. I knew what he was saying but I thought if something like that ever happened to me I would just make the thought go away, but you can’t, can you?”

“You want to talk about it, Lucille?”

“I guess not.”

I put my arms around her and turned her face toward me. There were tears in the corners of her eyes.

I said, “Hey.”

“Lemme be, Chip.”

“If something’s bothering you—”

“Oh, I’m making something out of nothing is all. Never had a thought in my head before and I’m just not used to it. Just a mood I’m in that I’ll get over.”

“Maybe it’s your period coming on.”

“You think so?”

“I don’t know.”

“Maybe that’s what it is,” she said.

What it probably was, I felt, was that she had gotten a contact high from my own moods. Because I couldn’t stop thinking about what Geraldine and I had not quite discussed and what Sheriff Tyles and I had not quite talked over. Which was that I would stay in Bordentown and share the management of the Lighthouse with Geraldine, and together we would expand the operation and hire more girls and put in gambling tables, and in a year or two when she was ready to spend the rest of her days sipping banana liqueur in Puerto Rico, the Lighthouse would be mine.

And I could see it all happening just that way.

I got a paper and pencil and did a little rough figuring, and then I threw the paper away because the numbers I was using were just ones I was picking out of the blue. And the numbers didn’t matter, anyway, because you didn’t need them to realize that the Lighthouse, run the way Geraldine was talking about running it, couldn’t help but make a fortune.

I mean, it wasn’t just a matter of being secure and established and successful.

I’d get rich.

It wouldn’t be hard, either. At first I thought that Geraldine only thought I was right for it for the same reason that she thought I was fit to play chess with. There just weren’t that many people around to choose from. But I had to admit it went further than that. I was honest, and I did get along well with the girls, and I seemed to have a feeling for handling the customers, and Sheriff Tyles, who she said didn’t take to many people, had done everything on earth short of adopting me. On top of all that, I kind of liked the business itself. I had always thought that the only reason anyone would want to go and live in a whorehouse was so he could have his pick of the whores, but I hadn’t picked one of them yet and I really liked living there. I mean, I felt at home there.

And as far as the gambling part of it was concerned, I suppose I was suited for that, too. I had played cards a few times without getting caught up in it, and I couldn’t imagine ever risking anything important on whether two pair was the best hand at the table or what number would come up on the next roll of dice. And why anyone would drop a perfectly good quarter in a slot machine was beyond me.

Now it seems to me that the one thing you wouldn’t want to be if you ran a gambling operation is a gambler. It was like a blackout alcoholic owning a liquor store, or a sex maniac running a whorehouse. You would just eat up all the profits. And at the time I was kind of interested in gambling in a spectator-type way. I mean, as long as it’s not my money, the excitement’s fine.

I would be rich, and I would be comfortable with what I was doing, and I would be good at it. The whole thing would be officially illegal, but there are laws and laws. And even if Sheriff Tyles stopped being sheriff sooner or later, by then I would be one of the important men in Bordentown. It doesn’t take all that much to be one of the important men in Bordentown, it’s not like being President of the United States. I would be important.

I kept just playing all of this through my mind. It was like Lucille had said, a television set in your head that you can’t turn off.

The thing was, I liked the program.

Of course thinking about all this made me think about Lucille, too, because she was part of it. Until I talked with Geraldine (or listened to her, because she was the one who did all the talking) I took it for granted that I was going to leave Bordentown sooner or later. I was in no rush, and I had more or less forgotten all that business about Miami, until the Sheriff reminded me, but I would be leaving sooner or later.

And, although I didn’t like to dwell on it, when I left Bordentown I would also be leaving Lucille.

Oh, once in a while I would play around with the thought of taking her with me. But I don’t think I ever gave that any serious consideration. In Bordentown, for an hour a day five days a week, she was perfect. In the rest of the world, and on a full-time basis, she just wouldn’t work out. (Maybe that line makes me sound like a shit, but it’s honest. She wouldn’t work out for me and I wouldn’t work out for her and it’s silly to pretend otherwise.)