Джон Макдональд - You Live Once

I moved back fast as the door latch clicked. She got out of the car quickly. She’d have seen me if she’d turned my way, but she headed off, heels punching the gravel, toward the front door of the club. I was back in better cover when Dodd got out and lighted a cigarette. I watched him take three long draws, then snap it away toward the wet grass. He followed her slowly. When I got my cigarettes the interior of the car was heavy with the perfume she used, a musky, offbeat scent.

When I drove them home I dropped Dodd off first. Mary Olan didn’t move over next to the door after he got out. She stayed pleasantly and encouragingly close to me, the side of her leg touching mine. I took her out to the Pryor place where I had picked her up. Though a lot of the old line families have stayed down in the shady quiet streets of town, a few, such as Willy Pryor, have built out in the country. It has a stone wall, a bronze sign, a quarter mile of curving drive before you get to it. Probably the outmoded term for it would be a machine for living. You know the type — all dramatics. Dramatic window walls, dramatic bare walls, dramatic vistas. Two floodlighted pieces of statuary — one all sheet aluminum and the other a grey stone woman with spider limbs and great holes right through her where breasts should have been. The architects do fine, they can really set up a place. The only trouble is that no one has been similarly occupied redesigning people. Such machines cannot sit in sterile functional perfection. We people have to move in — bringing, of course, our unmodified belch, our unreconstructed dandruff, our enlarged pores and our sweaty love.

I parked and Mary made no move toward the door handle, so I gathered her in and kissed her. She hesitated for a stilted second and then baked the enamel on my teeth. She was no pulpy junior miss. She brought to the task at hand a nice interplay of musculature, a crowding enthusiasm, and the durability and implacability of a Marciano. She stopped all clocks except the one in the blood, so that on terminus, I was dimly startled to find myself merely sitting in my own automobile.

“You’re an agreeable monster, Sewell,” she said softly.

“Likewise.”

“You should get a bonus for overtime.”

“A truly obscure remark,” I said, pretending young innocence.

“Would, Sewell, that I were a touch more charitable and I would make of myself a suitable bonus, because I suspect you are a nice guy who deserves a better deal than you are getting.”

“Tonight is my night to be told I’m a nice guy. How do I go about arousing your charitable instincts, lady?”

She permitted a second flanking operation. During same I investigated traditionally, hopefully, a breast warm and classic. She rebanked her fires and extricated lips and breast, putting a cold foot of distance betwixt us.

“No sale, Sewell.”

“Anything my best friends have neglected to tell me?”

“Nope. You are a fine crew-cut, long-limbed specimen of young American manhood, my dear.”

“They why?”

“Don’t ask it with a pout. I guess it is because you are what you are. For a man to intrigue me he must have a wide streak of son-of-a-bitch.”

“I can work on that.”

“Hardly.”

“Could you force yourself?”

She reached a quick hand and knuckled the top of my head. “That would be pure charity, sweets, and you have too much pride for that, don’t you?”

“And the next line is let us be good friends.”

“Seriously, I’d like that, Clint. I need a good friend.”

I sighed with resignation. “Okay, what do you want to do with your good friend on the morrow.”

“Wouldst go to church with me, sir?”

It was quite the last thing I expected. “Yes. Of course.”

“Pick me up here at twenty of eleven then.”

I walked her to her door. She smiled up at me. “You are sweet.”

“Then pat me on the head, damn it.”

“Temper, temper! Kiss goodnight.”

As that kiss ended I took revenge with my long right arm. She yelped and took a cut at me and missed. As I drove home I knew that if she had a full-length mirror and looked back down over her shoulder within the next ten minutes, she could admire a nice distinct hand print.

Looking back I can count over twenty dates with her, including the time at the motel and the last one on the night of Saturday, May fifteenth. But not including that last ride we took together, up into the hills. Date from which she would not return.

Nancy and I sat on the pine log. She smoked her cigarette and scratched at a punkie bite on her ankle. Ever since the night she had gotten drunk and told me her woes, we had talked frankly with each other, though she had retained an aura of shyness. I had not told her what I had learned that night. There was no point in it. Suspicions could hurt, but the actuality would be worse.

“I hope... I hope she never comes back,” Nancy said.

I didn’t say anything for too long and the words hung there between us until Nancy laughed mirthlessly. “I don’t mean I hope anything bad has happened to her. Even to her. I just hope she’s found some other fly to pull the wings off.”

“She’s impulsive,” I said.

“Nice polite word. She’s a harpy. She feeds on people. She has a nice built-in excuse — her insane mother. That’s handy for her. No marriage, so she does as she pleases. Including going to bed with my husband.”

“You aren’t positive of that, though.”

“Oh, I am, Clint. Entirely certain. I kidded myself for a long time. But you can’t live with a man and not know. All the little false touches. That blandness, with all the guilt underneath. I know, Clint. I’ve known for a long time. It started back in February, a month after we arrived. She didn’t waste any time, did she?”

“Don’t try to laugh about it.”

“Aren’t I supposed to be gay about it? Isn’t that sophisticated or something? Last night after we got home we had a real scrap. He wouldn’t admit it, of course. I asked him about the things that are missing. His good robe, some sports shirts, an extra pair of slippers — little things like that. And a book of poems. Poems! My God, can you imagine reading poems to a... a thing like that? I asked him if it would ease his conscience any if I took a lover. You know, continental style. Sauce for the goose. At that he stormed out and didn’t come back until five this morning. Anyway, I wanted to talk to you, Clint. I haven’t told him or anybody else, but I’m going to leave him.”

“Do you mean that?”

“I have some pride. I don’t have to put up with this. I can earn my own living. It hurts... hurts badly, Clint, when someone tells you in that way that you aren’t enough for them. Enough woman.”

“You want to be awfully sure, Nancy.”

“I am sure. I’ve told you so much of my personal life. Aren’t you sick of it? Don’t you want to know everything? The whole story? I have two small brown moles right here on my left hip. Tomatoes give me a rash. When I get emotionally upset, I get diarrhea. Nervous colon they call it. I lost my virginity when I was sixteen and had a job waiting on table at a summer...”

“Nancy!” Her voice had gone shrill and her face was tense.

The tension went out of her. She put her head down on her bare knees and said in a small voice, “I’m sorry, Clint.”

I touched the silky-fine blonde hair. “You’ve had it rough. I don’t blame you. But promise one thing. Think about it for a week.”

She sighed. “If you think I ought to.”

“I do.”

She sighed again. “Clint?”

“Yes, honey.”

“Clint... do you want me?” Her voice was shy, far off.